Hi, I’m Tom Godfrey,
Theatre Director and Film Producer.
This is the story of the making of my film documentary series about ELT training.
What is the documentary about?
Each year thousands of young people globally leave the security of their family and culture to persue dreams of becoming English Language Teachers. I know this thrilling feeling of excitement firsthand as over 40 years ago I, too, set off on a flight to Libya seeking the adventure and challenge of teaching English in a foreign land.
There are centres all over the world offering ELT training courses. These courses are like a fruit salad of people from different origins and social backgrounds blending together in a unique flavour of interacting cutures. The documentary series is set in one of these training centres.
Each documentary episode follows two enthusiastic participants. We witness them struggle mentally to process the teaching methods; endure the physical exhaustion of all-night lesson planning; experience the emotional fears of failure and joys of success.
The documentary series provides an authentic portrayal of the challenges of being an ELT teacher.
Educational Objective
The documentary series also has an overt educational objective. The series highlights the skills of effective teaching such as: clarity of instructions, checking understanding, engaging and motivating learners, setting clear tasks etc. These are important life skills that are relevant to everyone’s personal and professional development.
We aim to stimulate interaction on social media about the skills and teaching methods depicted in the documentary series to arouse engagement not only within the 12 million ELT teachers worldwide but also within the 2 billion active learners of English globally.
Why are we making a documentary?
‘When are you going to get a proper job?’
The view that TEFL is something you do for travel, adventure and to gain life experience before settling down to a more established career persists.
One aim of this documentary is to protray the training of an EFL teaccher for the challenging and emotional roller coaster that it is. In each episode we empathise with the young participants from different cultures and social backgrounds as they embark on their rigorous training voyage that challenges them mentally, physically and emotionally as they develop skills to fulfill their dreams of becoming English Language Teachers.
TEFL training courses have existed all over the world for decades but there has never been a documentary showing what it is like to train on a course.
A subsidiary motivation is to stimulate discussion and professional development thereby contributing to the raising of teaching standards. Through global distribution of the documentary series we intend to galvanise the support of the TEFL community and encourage teacher professional development.
Tom Godfrey 