1. Climate action in language education is a free online course from TeachingEnglish which aims to help you “integrate environmental issues in English language teaching and develop the skills you need to take and sustain meaningful and impactful action to protect the environment in your local context”. It starts on 7^th November https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/climate-action-language-education

Three three-hour modules over a month, with a mixture of live events, discussion fora and self-study.

You’ll need to create (it’s free and quick) a TeachingEnglish account if you haven’t already got one.

2. Here’s an exercise in point and counterpoint:

the point is a post from Philip Kerr’s blog, Perspectives on language teaching research https://adaptivelearninginelt.wordpress.com/2023/09/23/perspectives-on-language-teaching-research/

and the counterpoint is a post from Geoff Jordan’s blog, What do you think you’re doing? https://applingtesol.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/the-relevance-of-sla-research-for-language-teachers/

I read that title of Geoff’s with the stress on the ‘do’!

3. Stride is an online global citizenship magazine for schools from Scotland http://www.stridemagazine.org.uk/

Its home page currently has a link to “a curated Padlet of resources to support you with approaching the Israel- Palestine conflict with your learners” from HOW, the Highland One World Global Learning Centre. “The board includes background reading, guidance, first-hand stories from Israel and Palestine, and primary and secondary teaching packs.” https://padlet.com/Highland_One_World/approaching-the-palestine-israel-conflict-with-learners-47fw8lw0s67gwigx

4. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the event in memory of Dubravka Ugrešić at SSEES earlier this week. By far and away my sternest critic, my wife Boba, says it went well. If you’d like to know a bit more about Dubravka, here’s an informative obituary from the New York Times https://tinyurl.com/yc8j85sm

and below is a home-made PDF of the piece she published in The Independent and Die Zeit in late 1992, The Dirty Tyranny of Mr Clean, that first got her into political hot water.

I failed to teach Dubravka English for three months in 1981. No matter: she later taught herself excellent English!

5. And, finally, What can nuns reveal about the secrets of ageing? In the Radio 4 podcast Uncharted, mathematician Hannah Fry explains how a graph tracking nuns’ mental capacity over decades helped reveal vital insights into how our brains age https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001r1p4

and here’s the matching article from the BBC website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3TXBkZtyNRPpCCknlVpTnV4/what-can-nuns-reveal-about-the-secrets-of-ageing