To coincide with the beginning of Poland’s school year, the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Poland has organized a 10-part webinar series for Polish teachers of English. The webinars focus on current issues in English language learning, such as strategies for teaching in the times of COVID, ways to create inclusive classrooms, and how to design content for language-integrated learning. The webinars have been made possible by the U.S. Department of State’s Virtual English Language Fellow Program and have been presented by the U.S.-based English Language Fellow Ms. Willow Barnosky. In her recent captivating webinar “Creating an Inclusive Classroom,” Ms. Barnosky encouraged teachers to develop an environment of trust in the classroom, including no tolerance for bullying, and gave tips for teaching empathy. The Embassy’s Cultural Attaché Dan Hastings and the Krakow Consulate General’s Public Affairs Officer Amy Steinmann have participated in the highly popular events. Kelli Odhuu, the Department of State’s Regional English Language Officer based in Tallinn, Estonia, has also joined and spoke during the webinars.
The webinars will be continued in the upcoming months. For now, don’t miss Ms. Barnosky’s presentation on October 10 – at the conference “Kapelusze Lektora” – on Creative Communicative Language Teaching in the Time of COVID-19. Also please join us on October 5 for the IATEFL webinar on Writing in the Digital Age, and on October 19 for media literacy webinar on Identifying Online Misinformation and Bias organized in cooperation with the English Teaching Program of “NIDA” Foundation. Please follow the announcements on the Facebook pages of the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw and the U.S. Consulate General in Kraków to find out how to register.
The U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Poland would like to thank the Polish branch of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), the Warsaw Center for Education and Social Innovations (WCIES), the Polish Association for Quality in Foreign Language Teaching, ORE – Warsaw Center for Development in Education, and the Nowodworski High School in Krakow for helping to organize the 10 webinars for teachers of English in Poland.