'SMALL TOWN STORIES' ELT PROF. DEVELOPMENT COURSE
'SMALL TOWN STORIES' ELT PROF. DEVELOPMENT COURSE - This project was a country-wide professional development course developed in partnership with Serbia's English Language Teachers Association and supported by the US embassies in Belgrade and and the US State Department English Language Programs.
'Small Town Stories’ Creative Writing Course for ELT was a five week blended learning professional development course I designed and ran in partnership with Serbia's English Language Teachers Association. It's purpose was to provide EFL teachers from geographically remote or socially isolated communities throughout Serbia with training to build writing skills and generate curriculum to reinvigorate classroom instruction. This course was held from November-December 2015.
Primarily taught online, participants engaged in weekly exercises which provided instruction and practice in key creative writing skills and build their confidence as writers in English. At the same time, course participants used what they learned from their weekly exercises to construct lesson plans to implement in their EFL classes.Weekly online exercises provided instruction and practice in key creative writing skills including indirect characterization, flash fiction, dialogue, and world building. Participants posted original works to the online classroom, and receive constructive feedback from course participants and myself. This course culminated in a face-to-face weekend session in the Serbian spa town of Vrnjačka Banja where course participants workshopped their original short stories in roundtable sessions and participated in pedagogical and curriculum building activities.
In May 2016 the 'Small Town Stories' project was highlighted at the annual English Language Teachers Association with participants giving a public reading of their works. Additionally, the participants' stories were published in a catalog and their creative writing lesson plans made available for EFL teachers nation-wide.