Introductions

Thanks for joining me! I am very pleased you have found my blog. If you have, it might mean that you are in my current position – moving from a teaching role into the leadership and management role of Director of Studies. How is that going for you? What steps have you taken to prepare?

I was offered this position (context: Director of Studies at a small, private Language Teaching Organisation (ever after to be refered to as LTO), in a smallish city in the centre of Italy) 6 months ago. I agreed to take it on only if I was able to finish the academic year as a teacher – I was working in a small private international school as a 5th grade teacher, and wanted to be able to end the year with my class.

That was not a problem, and so I had 6 months to mentally prepare myself for the transition. I looked around for some courses, and decided to do the International House Online Teacher Training Institute  Director of Studies course – a 12 week online course which covers almost everything you may need to know in your new role. That was probably the best decision I made, after saying yes to the job, of course!

After talking to the director of the LTO several times, I realised that one of my main duties would be planning and running in-house training sessions. I followed the DoS course with the IH OTTI Teacher Trainer Certificate, which at the time of writing, I am still completing. It is also proving to be very useful.

That is the background. This blog is meant to be a diary of the transition to DoS – I hope that you will enjoy sharing the journey, and perhaps learn something from my experiences.

Happy DoSing…

Jo Gillespie

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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