Starting a Teacher Study Group at Your Monastery
Formal training is rare and expensive. A group of four teachers meeting for an hour a week is neither, and over a year it does more.
Most teachers in monastic schools will attend a training course perhaps once every few years, if at all. The course is usually good and the effect usually fades within a term, because a three-day workshop cannot compete with the pull of how everyone around you already teaches. What changes practice durably is a small group of colleagues who meet regularly and talk about specific lessons.
This is not a substitute for training and we are not suggesting it replaces one. It is the thing that makes training stick, and it is available to any four teachers with an hour a week.
How to start one
- Find three colleagues, not ten. A group of four can all speak in an hour. A group of ten becomes a meeting, and meetings drift towards announcements.
- Fix the hour and protect it. The same day, the same time, every week. Groups that meet when everyone is free stop meeting within a month.
- Agree that it is not for complaints about pupils. This one rule does more for a study group than any agenda. Difficulties with a class are welcome; the discussion has to end at what the teacher will try next.
- Start with something concrete. One lesson, one activity, one pupil who is stuck. Broad topics produce broad conversation and nothing to take back to the classroom.
A shape that works for the hour
The most reliable pattern we have seen is simple. Fifteen minutes: one teacher describes something they tried since the last meeting and what happened. Twenty minutes: the group asks questions, without giving advice, until they understand the situation properly. Fifteen minutes: suggestions. Ten minutes: everyone states one thing they will try before the next meeting.
The rule about questions before advice is the part groups want to skip and the part that makes the difference. Advice given after three minutes is usually advice about a situation you have imagined rather than the one your colleague is in.
The commitment at the end is what turns a pleasant conversation into a change in a classroom. Keep it small enough that everyone can honestly report back.
Watching each other teach
After a few months, groups usually become ready to visit each other lessons. This is worth doing carefully, because in most schools a visitor in the classroom means an inspection. Agree in advance that the visiting teacher is there to watch the pupils rather than the teacher, and give them one specific thing to look for: how many pupils spoke, how long the instructions took, what happened in the first two minutes.
Observations framed that way produce information rather than judgement, and they are far easier for both teachers to sit with. A teacher who learns that eleven of their fifty pupils spoke during a lesson has something they can act on. A teacher who is told their lesson was good has nothing.
If you are the only English teacher
Many of our members are the only person teaching English in their school, which makes a local group impossible. Two things help. A group of teachers of different subjects still works, because most of what you will discuss is not subject specific. And our membership exists partly to connect teachers in the same situation across different schools, so if you are alone at your school, write to us and we will try to put you in touch with others.
Does this match what you see in your classroom?
We write these from what members tell us. If your experience is different, or you have adapted something here and it worked, that is exactly what we want to hear about.