1. First out of the blocks today, an article by Uwe Pohl, Developing teacher presence: nature or nurture? PDF below – thank you, Uwe! – and also to be found here, in Klančnik, R.N. and Leva, B. (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 30th International IATEFL Slovenia Conference: What keeps us going https://www.iatefl.si/files/2025/11/KONFERENCNA-BROSURA-2025.pdf

Language teaching is often seen as a mix of craft and applied science. This is certainly true if we consider the linguistic and pedagogical background knowledge as well as the broad professional skills base needed to teach well. In other words, competent and confident EFL teachers know what to do in the classroom because they can rely on experience, methodological and content knowledge, as well as on a wide repertoire of subject-specific skills. But highlighting the closeness of teacher expertise to performative art, educationalists like Schön (1987), Almond (2019), and Sorensen (2023) remind us that teacher expertise is fundamentally improvisatory and that teachers also have a very special way of being in the classroom. One could say they have a personal kind of energy or presence, which creates a “unique psychological atmosphere” around them (Underhill 1987).

2. A piece from Saturday’s Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash, Only Europe can save Ukraine from Putin and Trump – but will it? Timothy Garton Ash https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/06/europe-ukraine-putin-trump-eu

Europe, you have been warned. President Vladimir Putin has waged a full-scale war against Ukraine for nearly four years and this week threatened that Russia was “ready right now” for war with Europe if need be. President Donald Trump has demonstrated that the US is ready to sell out Ukraine for the sake of a dirty deal with Putin’s Russia. His new US National Security Strategy prescribes “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. How much more clarity do you need?

3. Macmillan English’s Educating Adults Day with Lindsay Clandfield, Carolina E. Kuepper-Tetzel & Karolina Kotorowicz-Jasińska is this Wednesday, 10^th December, repeated at 10:00, 15:00 and 21:30 UK time. More info and registration here https://www.macmillanenglish.com/mt/training-events/events-webinars/event/educating-adults-day-2

Teaching adults means adapting to diverse needs, tight frameworks, and fast-changing expectations. In this three-part event, we explore how to stay flexible and focused in that reality. From reworking a syllabus to suit your own teaching context, to applying the latest research on how adults learn best, to supplementing a coursebook without overwhelming your lessons — each session offers practical strategies that speak to the same challenge: making informed, intentional choices in the adult English language classroom.

The pedant in me wonders whether teaching children also ‘means adapting to diverse needs, tight frameworks, and fast-changing expectations’?

4. Andragogy is not the word of the year this year and probably never has been, but here’s another word of the year I’ve never come across or used, this time from Oxford University Press https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/

5. And, finally and mysteriously, for Crime Reads by Sarah Meuleman, What Happened to Barbara Newhall Follett? She was a Child Prodigy Novelist. And Then She Disappeared https://crimereads.com/what-happened-to-barbara-newhall-follett/

Meet Barbara. Not exactly your average American kid. Barbara is extremely gifted. She is intelligent and ambitious. A prodigy. Very much in awe of nature, and in love with writing. In 1927, at the incredibly young age of twelve, Barbara published her first novel to great critical acclaim. Two years later, her second novel followed. Then things changed. In spite of her literary success, she suffered several personal blows and reportedly became depressed. In December 1939, at the age of twenty-five, Barbara walked out of her Brookline apartment, never to be seen again.