As part of my continuous professional development in ELT (CPD) as a teacher and then a writer, I have attended I can’t even guess how many hours of CPD. Here are a few off the top of my head:
Monthly input sessions during my first year of teaching at Caledonionan school in Prague where I was lucky enough to have Ken Lackman as a tutor. He introduced newbies like me to the lexical approach, among other things.
A teaching grammar course at IH Lacunza in San Sebastian where I learned about noun phrases and adverbial clauses on top of general input sessions on things like teaching Young Learners and using songs.
An MA in ELT at York St John that I funded myself where I learned about SLA research, English as a world language and …er some other stuff.
Conferences attended such as IATEFL, something in Spain, some other thing in London once where I learned …er some more stuff about ELT.
Training sessions on how to be an oral examiner for Cambridge YL exams, followed by others on examining KET, PET and FCE (as they were called at that time) that gave me another income stream for a while and allowed me to write a book on how to teach the FCE.
A copy editing proofreading course from the London College of Media and Publishing that I immediately put to use and earned the fee back but then haven’t used since.
Most of my memories of these various examples of my continuous professional development in ELT have blurred together in my mind, some of them got assimilated into what I did in the classroom and beyond; others sounded good but I never managed to put them into practice; others, like the MA, deepened my understanding of ELT so that I was able to make more money and branch out into other areas.
All of this training and knowledge-seeking arose from a culture that’s embedded in ELT: lifelong learning. In self-improvement and professional advancement terms, we’re possibly the biggest consumers of career knowledge of any other profession I can think of apart from medicine.
Learning to invest is just another form of continuous professional development in ELT.
That salary we work and train so hard to earn could not only be adding to our income (which, let’s face it, isn’t always enhanced significantly by the CPD we attain) but could be funding further CPD if some of it is invested and earning money for us.
The MA I took was very cheap by today’s standards (£2500) but, even so, I took an overdraft that followed me around for a couple of years and then resulted in a knock to my UK credit score because I forgot to inform the bank I’d moved country and some other confusion about how long it was intererest-free.
If I’d known about investing back then I might not even have needed the credit in the first place.
Unfortunately, as well as being a profession that values training, self-development and professional education, we’re also one that often actively avoids thinking about the money side of work and career. But the only thing truly separating “professional” from “hobby” is the fact we earn a living from the former and not the latter.
From that standpoint, the decision to take a course about investing is the next logical career move and I can help you make it.
Learning how to invest so your money earns money is much faster than that one year full-time MA I took, not to mention a fraction of the price, and will start earning back the course fee as soon as you open the various accounts your money will grow in.
You’ll come away with insight into risk, the stock market and how it works as well as other forms of investing that are less volatile, the fundamental principles of investing and the psychology that underpins the success of the whole thing.
The next course starts Nov 2 and lasts just 6 weeks. The recordings will be available for catch up if you can’t quite make the live sesion. There’s more info on the course here or you can sign up to my mailing list of contact me directly here.
