As anyone who has taken a CELTA will attest, the four week teacher training programme is an intensive and occasionally stressful experience.
Like most teacher trainers, Anthony Gaughan wants to make the training experience as smooth and stress free as possible for his trainees. So, he set about putting systems in place to reduce the workload of trainees and, whilst acknowledging that any intensive training programme will involve a degree of stress, keep the strain on trainees to a minimum.
He believed he’d hit upon a workable formula until an encounter with David Carr and a book launch event for Scott Thornbury and Luke Medding’s Teaching Unplugged made him to take stock of what he was trying to achieve.
The video below is from a teacher development session Anthony delivered at IH London in September 2015. He talks us through a journey that has taken him from the development of a “finely tuned teacher training machine” to unravelling it all in the pursuit of a way to deliver an unplugged version of teacher training.
The views expressed in this video do not necessarily represent the views of International House London.
Teacher training unplugged
About Anthony Gaughan 
Anthony Gaughan is an English language teacher, teacher trainer and a Cambridge ESOL appointed Assessor for the CELTA award.
He explores the theory and practice of ELT in his blog Teacher Training Unplugged and volunteers as the Social Media Manager for TDSIG – the Teacher Development Special Interest Group of IATEFL.
TEFL training and CPD
If you would like to know more about training options for teaching English as a foreign language visit our Start Teaching page.
For qualified teachers looking to build on existing skills we run CPD courses and Delta training at IH London to help you take your career to the next level.