“52” – Subversive e-book for subversive teachers

First, I saw this:

Then, I thought ‘wow, I really need this e-book’. And run to a friend of mine to buy it (thanks, Olek!). Now, I can say ‘WOW, YOU really need it too!’.

The full title of this little pearl is “52 – A year of subversive activity for the ELT classroom” and so it was meant for English teachers. But I think there’s a great message the authors, Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Meddings, have sent out with this collection of activities. We, the language teachers, cannot confine our students to a sterile classroom enviroment. It’s not where the learners will be using the language for the rest of their lives (hopefully!).

This is actually what bugs me lately, my sheer unability to overcome the textbooks and classes. The fear of pushing myself forward, to the real world, at least in terms of receptive skills for now. Two of my Japanese students lately asked me about passages of text they were translating after classes. For themselves! One was listening to a song, the other was reading a novel in Japanese. Then I’m not that bad in the pursuit of making the foreign language a part of their lives. What about myself?

But back to the book; it has 52 short chapters, one for each week of the year, introducing an activity or a set of activities dealing with a rather difficult topic. You’ll see why “every potato is the same”, what the way you dress conveys to your students, how to phone a CEO you recently broke up with to beg for a second chance and when should you reconsider believing an advert.

I think he authors did a great job with finding inspiring, authentic material and creating engaging activities. This makes me wonder – should I teach about call girls or homeless in Japan? Maybe I should talk about the history of how Ido was born out of Esperanto in my Esperanto classes? Polish classes with alcohol abuse and domestic violence? I already remember big lectures I gave on Japanese curse words and the language of Japanese hentai and porn industry. Those felt great, but I was younger then. Do I still have what it takes to teach topics like that?

A small booklet like this can be, as you see, really, really inspiring. I recommend it for every teacher out there, regardless of what language do you teach! You can [buy it here] for only 6 bucks :)! There’s also [a blog] dedicated to the ongoing evolution of this project and you should read it too! You’ll get a better idea about what you are investing your money in.