supporting you properly allows you to do a better job and that's good for the organisation

providing teacher development opportunities demonstrates Elac's commitment to high-quality academic programmes

teachers come back to us year after year and that's a valuable thing in itself because it improves the quality of what we provide

Teaching materials: Course Books and supplementary books
We can't possible provide full course books for every student in the organisation and this would not be appropriate, given the fact that the most common length of course is only 2 weeks (30 hours).  However, all centres will have a range of up-to-date course books available for you to make use of.  You may also make use of the ever-growing bank of supplementary photocopiable material, or use material of your own.  In addition to all that, Elac is actively enhancing its provision by commissioning the writing of banks of off-the-peg lessons which you can use to add variety to what you do.  Important among these is the set of excursion-specific lessons which have been developed for you to use with classes before they go on an excursion.  You read more about these on the first section of the teacher induction pages.  Remember? No?  OK, click here to go back there.  Close the page to return.
Whichever material you use, it is important to remember that on a course like ours, the goal is to promote interaction and communication, and the material should be chosen to support this goal.

CD Players and Cassette Recorders
There will be a number of CD players and tape recorders available for use during the course.  Please don't leave them in the classroom unattended.  At some centres, data projectors and PCs are available in most classrooms and we're working on extending this provision.  Don't, however, rely on having access to these.

Photocopying
A photocopier will be available in all centres for your photocopying needs. Please attempt to keep photocopying to a minimum.  Never rely 100% on photocopying when planning.  There's always a day when something goes wrong!

Can you get them to engage linguistically with their environment?  Set them a task to bring information back to the classroom: if they are family stay students, ask them to find out something about their hosts; if they are residential, ask them to bring back information about students of other nationalities in their accommodation block.  Get all of them to look out for signs around the college or on excursion, and ‘collect’ new language to share with the class.

Can you help them towards more learner independence?  Perhaps you could schedule a lesson where you can access the internet, if it is available in your centre, and show them some of the learning resources available online; you could help them to develop ways of dealing with new vocabulary they encounter, showing them what is important to know about new lexical items and how they might be recorded.

Can you help them to identify their strengths and weakness?  Set up a writing task leading to some self-evaluation and peer evaluation: perhaps they could set themselves some goals before they leave the course for future development.

Every centre has a Director of Studies or Senior Teacher whose main role is supporting you.  These people know what they are talking about and many of them have worked for Elac for a long time.  Don't ever be afraid to ask them for help and advice – that's what we pay them for.

Elac also employs a Consultant Academic Director (Dave Russell).  In the summer, Dave will visit all the Elac centres if he can.  His role then is to support the DoS / Senior Teacher, observe teachers and give practical and constructive help, advice and feedback.
He will also run teacher development seminars.  In the past, these have included sessions on teaching speaking, handling vocabulary, presenting grammar interestingly and handling problems in the classroom.  More are planned.  These seminars are also open to Group Leaders, many of whom are teachers in their own countries.  At other times, Dave's involved in developing the academic programme and, incidentally, writing these pages.

Non-academic support is available, too.  It is a priority for this organisation to make sure, as far as we can, that you are comfortable in the role you perform and have the tools to do a good job.