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This page was created to assist graduate student instructors (GSIs) by providing resources to enhance their professional development. Here below you will find a short list of tips, tools, and resources you can use inside and outside the classroom to enhance the quality of your classes as well as your professional profile. These suggestions and ideas are informed by scholarly literature as well as my own professional experience. While they are designed primarily for GSIs, some may also be useful for language teachers in other contexts.

I hope you will find these ideas helpful as you start or continue your journey as a language teacher!

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1. Seek out materials and activities to integrate to your textbook

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1. Seek out materials and activities to integrate to your textbook

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As language teachers, most of us have used or are using textbooks in our classes. But who has never had any complaints about them? They can be too difficult for students to understand, or not challenging enough. The exercises may be too mechanical, or too open-ended. There may not be enough about culture, or there may be, but some communities may be represented, and others ignored. The Internet offers a variety of Open Educational Resources including tools, apps, and resources that you can use to integrate and complement what your textbook is already offering.

Tips for searching OERs (University of Texas-Austin)
OER Commons: A comprehensive platform to search OERs.
Pixabay: A large repository of stock images for free use.
Wikimedia Commons: Open media resources including images, sounds, and videos.
Kahoot!: Gamify your classes with interactive games available in many languages and disciplines.
COERLL: A comprehensive platform featuring open language materials in several languages (UT-Austin)
Open Learn: A platform offering free courses in various disciplines, including languages.
Trayectos: An entirely OER-based beginning level Spanish course (Texas A&M).
Zanichelli benvenuti: A website offering free materials and practice activities in Italian.

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While there are already many OERs out there for us to use, edit, and adapt, in some cases we may prefer making our own materials. The Internet offers a variety of tools to help you enhance your classroom activities, whether based on text, audio, video, or multiple modalities. You also have the option of adding a Creative Commons license to your materials, making them materials publicly available and editable for other teachers.

Audacity: free software to record and/or edit audio files.
Flipgrid: record short videos on your own or collaboratively.
WriteComics: A simple tool to design your comics you can include in your lesson plans or practice activities.
7 tips to use online video tools in your classroom
Tools and techniques to create OERs: A useful overview provided by Iowa State University.
Open Author: A tool provided by OER Commons to help you design your materials.
Creative Commons Licensing: License your materials with a simple, step-by-step process.

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Some teachers might wonder: now that I have made all these materials…what else can I do with them? One idea to consider is making a teaching portfolio online. With a teaching portfolio, you can showcase your creativity and bolster your professional profile, while maintaining your materials and lesson plans organized. Several options exist for you to build your personal website, and many of them are free, including Google Sites, Padlet, Wix, and Wordpress, among others. And good news: you don’t need to be a professional coder to create a beautiful portfolio of your materials!

Teaching portfolios: A brief article describing features and reasons why you should consider making a teaching portfolio.
Tips for developing an effective teaching portfolio.
A guide to create teaching portfolios (Vanderbilt University).
Sample Teaching Portfolio: A sample teaching portfolio designed on Google Sites to collect Italian language materials.

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Together with the portfolio, writing a teaching statement can help you enrich your professional profile as reflect on your own teaching style and beliefs. If you also have a teaching portfolio, a teaching statement is a very important addition to consider.

Here are some resources and guides to help you write teaching statements:

Cornell University
University of North Carolina
Vanderbilt University

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5. Think of your professional development as ongoing

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5. Think of your professional development as ongoing

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Most of us language teachers have received the bulk of our training in the early stages of our graduate degrees. And especially as we accumulate teaching experience over the years, it may be easy to stop questioning ourselves and begin relying on the same tools and activities over and over again, especially when our courses are successful. Teacher development, however, is an ongoing, never-ending process of self-discovery and adaptation. To this effect, you may consider the following strategies to continue your journey and avoid becoming complacent:

-- Engage in self-reflection activities, like journaling, to reflect on classroom dynamics and your own practices and experiences.
5 benefits of teacher self-reflection

-- Collaborate with one or more colleagues to observe one another (peer observation).
Resources for peer observation:
Getting started with peer observation (Cambridge Assessment International Education)
Peer Observation (Victoria State Government)
Peer Observation (University of South Carolina)

-- Design and administer an anonymous survey to feel the pulse of your class and receive feedback without having to wait until the end of the semester.
Several free tools to design surveys exist, for example SurveyMonkey, SurveyPlanet, TypeForm. You can also find a simple mid-semester survey that I designed a few years ago to use in my courses.

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6. Seek out opportunities for professional development outside of your program

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6. Seek out opportunities for professional development outside of your program

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Many universities do offer opportunities for teacher professional development beyond initial teaching training. These may include courses and workshops, and some universities (e.g. Temple University, University of Washington, University of Arizona, Washington University in St Louis) even offer graduate certificates in teaching certificates.

In addition to these opportunities, you can find many useful online workshops and courses to further enhance your professional development. Several of these are free and self-paced; a few examples are listed below.

Future Learn language teaching courses

Workshops on Online Language Teaching (University of Wisconsin System)

Teach English now! (Coursera-Arizona State University)

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7. Become a voice of innovation in your program

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7. Become a voice of innovation in your program

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In a language program, change is inevitable, but innovation is not. Yet innovation is often desirable or needed, as in our courses we might find issues that we would like to see fixed. We may not be able to decide everything pertaining our course, but we may be able to make a decisive contribution to identify and address some issues. Then why not try? Finding issues and solutions will likely result in a better experience for both you and your students. Below are a few guidelines and possible steps to consider for you to become a source of innovation in your program:

-- Take notes on issues as you encounter them. When you identify a problem, think about why it is an problem, whether it can be solved, and what are some possible solutions.

-- Discuss your ideas with your colleagues in order to see whether other teachers have similar feelings.

-- Talking to your supervisors about the issue(s) you encountered. Do not be afraid to share your concerns and ideas to address them: most language program directors desire the success of our students and the program, just like us, but they don’t always have our privileged perspective of being in the classroom with the students every day.

-- Making meaningful innovation work may sometimes need us to invest some time and energy while we already have a busy life and workload. But most likely, such an investment will be well worth the trouble!

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Ayan, D., & Seferoğlu, G. (2011). Using electronic portfolios to promote reflective thinking in language teacher education. Educational Studies, 37(5), 513-521.

The study investigates the use of electronic teaching portfolios by pre-service English teachers in Turkey. By examining interviews with the participants as well as the eportfolios themselves, the study finds that teachers may benefit from eportfolios in multiple ways, for example as stimuli for grater teacher reflection and collaboration. Moreover, the editable nature of the eportfolio makes it an ideal tool for ongoing professional development.

Borthwick, K., & Gallagher-Brett, A. (2014). Inspiration, ideas, encouragement: Teacher development and improved use of technology in language teaching through open educational practice. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 27, 163-183.

This study analyzes the impact of engaging in development of open educational resources (OER) on language teacher professional development as well as teachers’ self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977). Through a survey as well as open groups, Borthwick and Gallagher-Brett (2014) find that the teachers perceive engaging in such practices as beneficial, in terms of enhancing their professional profile and technical skills, as well as their self-efficacy. The study also discusses OER activities as possible mitigators of some motivational challenges that teachers experience, especially considering the benefits of collaborating with colleagues in materials development.

Crane, C. (2015). Exploratory practice in the FL teaching methods course: A case study of three graduate student instructors’ experiences. L2 Journal, 7, 1-23

This qualitative study examines the experience of three graduate instructors involved in self-reflective activities within the exploratory practice (EP) framework as part of a shared German/Spanish teaching methods course. As shown by the results of the study, teachers may benefit from self-reflective activities in terms of greater understanding of their own teaching as well as their programs in a broader sense. In comparing novice and experienced instructors, differences in learning outcomes highlight the time needed by novice teachers to implement principles of EP in their teaching practices. Recommendations include integrating reflective activities in methods courses, since for many teachers these remain the main opportunities for teacher development.

Farrell, T. S. (2012). Novice‐service language teacher development: Bridging the gap between preservice and in‐service education and development. Tesol Quarterly, 46(3), 435-449.

In an article that introduces a special issue of Tesol Quarterly focused on novice teachers, Farrell (2012) offers recommendations as to reducing the gap between pre-service and in-service teacher education, for example through engagement in self-reflective activities and by offering supplementary courses. The article also briefly summarizes the studies presented in the special issue, which discuss topics such as teachers’ self-efficacy, preservice teacher training, mentorship in teacher education, and teacher social support networks.

Firdyiwek, Y., & Scida, E. (2014). Reflective course design: An interplay between pedagogy and technology in a language teacher education course. International Journal of ePortfolio, 4, 115-131.

The study describes the collaborative activities of redesign of a teaching methods course over multiple iterations. Through teamwork and use of diverse technologies including videos and electronic portfolios, the study shows the evolution of the course from an initial focus on individual reflection to encompass a more social dimension and to evolve again to adopt a holistic approach. The study emphasizes the value of collaborative work, reflective activities, and sharing reflections and materials as crucial elements of meaningful teaching development.

Harper, F., & Nicolson, M. (2013). Online peer observation: its value in teacher professional development, support and well-being. International Journal for Academic Development, 18(3), 264-275.

This study examines the participation of part-time language teachers at the UK’s Open University (OU) into an online peer observation project designed to foster creativity in synchronous online classrooms. According to the study, the project was beneficial for the teachers’ confidence, their willingness to experiment, and their sense of belonging to the multi-location OU teaching community. Moreover, teachers were able to establish new professional friendships and raised their awareness and understanding of how to enhance their professional self-development.

Lord, G. (2014). Language Program Direction: Theory and Practice. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Pearson Education.

An essential resource for language program directors as well as language teachers, Lord’s (2014) book thoroughly and insightfully describes characteristics of language programs as well as the multiple duties and responsibilities of Language Program Directors (LPDs). Areas discussed include program and course development, use of technology, teacher education, and innovation in language programs.

Richards, J., & Farrell, T. (2005). Peer Observation. In Professional Development for Language Teachers: Strategies for Teacher Learning, (pp. 85-97). Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Richards and Farrell (2005) discuss peer observation in language classes as a valuable tool for teachers’ professional development. In the article, the authors describe different facets of peer observation, including its nature, purpose, strategies and approaches, and implementation.

Stoller, F. L. (2012). The catalyst for change and innovation. In M. A. Christison & F. L. Stoller (Eds.), A handbook for language program administrators (pp. 37–55). Burlingame, CA: Alta Book Center.

A comprehensive article that defines the concept of innovation in language programs and discusses its multiple facets, including common reasons for seeking innovation and features of a language program that may favor or impede innovation. Moreover, Stoller discusses a process for diffusing innovation, constituted of three steps or phases (Initiation, Implementation, and Continuation), and highlights the importance for stakeholders, especially teachers, to be involved with all three phases. Finally, the article describes factors or variables that may facilitate and/or inhibit the innovation diffusion process.

Thoms, J. (2011). Investigating FL graduate student instructors' perceptions and use of technology. In F. N. Rubio et al. (Eds.) Hybrid FL teaching and learning: Exploring theoretical, pedagogical and curricular issues (pp. 192-211). Boston: Cengage.

Through a survey administered to 154 FL/L2 graduate student instructors (GSIs), this study investigates the training that GSIs receive in the use of technology. The study argues that while GSIs do receive training in the use of technology, this is largely confined to the early stages of their programs (e.g. in methods courses) and it rarely includes training in Web 2.0 tools and applications. Thoms (2011) offers recommendations for language programs, including extending the scope of teacher training to include these newer tools, and considering giving novice GSIs a course release for them to participate in collaborative materials design activities. The author also recommends LPDs to seek out opportunities for their GSIs to pursue ongoing professional development.

Wright, T. (2010). Second language teacher education: Review of recent research on practice. Language teaching, 43(3), 259-296.

Wright’s comprehensive article outlines trends, research, issues and directions of research in the Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) field. Among the topics discussed, the author examines the reconceptualization of SLTE and its consequences for teacher education curricula, as well as traditional and alternative tasks and learning experiences for teachers. The article also considers pedagogical developments in SLTE, with emphasis on the conception of the teacher as a learner and thinker, reflective activities, inquiry on teacher beliefs, and learning by direct experience.