I was thrilled to become a certified TESL teacher but quickly learned I didn't have the tools I needed to make the difference I wanted to make for my students. I hope my story of transition to language coach shaves years off of yours.

1. My Journey from
ESL Teacher to
Language Coach
May 26, 2020
Judy Thompson
International Language
Coaching Association

2. Todays Talk
Backstory, life experiences,
Dad’s bathroom, horses
Turning Points, moments after
which we are never the same
Finding My Tribe, lost in the
wilderness to coming home

3. ① Backstory
We bring elements of our whole lives to teaching
My dad had his own bathroom
Train a horse to do anything - Patterns

4. • In South Korea I taught graduate students – learning machines
• Students knew more ABOUT English than I did
• But they didn’t know how to USE the English they’d learned
• My students needed to DO English
• Drawing from a lifetime of experiences my classes were filled with
tea parties, English movies, playing poker, baseball, soccer,
ballroom dancing, skipping songs… all in English
• In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have imagined I’d use skipping
songs to teach English

5. • It didn’t seem weird that my Dad had his own washroom
• As a child, I didn’t know all Dad’s didn’t have their own
washrooms
• We were five kids and our stuff was in the big bathroom
• It wasn’t locked but there seemed no reason to go into my
Dad’s bathroom
• Inside it was like a big, tidy walk-in shaving kit
• This is part of my backstory we’ll revisit at the end

6. I was a single mom, four kids, training horses on our farm
Working with HORSES provided a tremendous set of transferable soft skills for
ESL!
Explaining HOW to train a horse to my daughter I realized there was a simple
PATTERN underpinning everything I did
If you are higher than the horse in the pecking order (they are HERD ANIMALS),
a horse will do anything you want if four conditions are met:
1. He understands the request
2. It is within his capability to do it
3. He isn’t in pain
4. He isn’t afraid
He’ll do what you want.
This is all part of my BACKSTORY that plays out over my teaching career

7. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Albert Einstein

8. ②Turning Points
Life-Changing Moments
The tools I
needed were not
not in my
training
I was in the
wrong place
There are others
others like me

9. My First Day
I was so happy
to be an ESL
teacher and
wanted to do
everything
perfectly.

10. Something Was
Wrong
I wasn’t really
doing what I
was telling
students I did
It took me four
years to figure
out the
disparity

11. In Canada
ESL is
nationally
standardized
¾ of learners
are beginners

12. Manuel was a doctor in his country. Years after he was my
student I met him in public and realized I‘d let him down.
• After 1,000 hours in
class ESL students didn’t
Speak English any better
than the control group
that had no training at
all.
• Trained ESL teachers
have no idea how to
teach Speaking and most
avoid it completely

13. My Life will
Never be
the Same
Manuel would not be a doctor
in Canada because I didn’t
teach him to speak English
This would never happen in
my classroom again
The tools I needed were NOT
my training

14. Forging a New Path
• Students couldn’t take Pronunciation at
the Board of Education until CLB 6
because the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA) was too difficult
• Lydia Aeillo and Kathryn Brillinger were
my awesome gurus as I learned about
teaching Pronunciation
• Everything they said was true but not
equally important
• A flash of brilliance changed everything
for me and my students

15. Epiphany: a relatively rare
occurrences that generally
follows a process of significant
thought about a problem
I noticed 16 color names each
featured one of the 16 English
vowel sounds
Judy is Blue.
The pronunciation of every word
in English is one of these 16
colors. No exceptions.

16. Exciting Stuff!
• Color names provide a bridge from
written to spoken English
• Keyboard symbols can easily and
accurately represent sounds
• Word stress, sentence stress,
linking… are all on one page
• Students at ANY LEVEL can learn
pronunciation and speaking…

17. I’m in the
Wrong Place
I took the color chart to my
supervisor who was only interested
interested in clean, full classrooms
classrooms not if anyone learned
None of my students registered for
the next level because they got jobs.
jobs. “You are screwing up our
school and we’d like you to leave”
My values did not align with those of
of my employer. I had to chose
between my salary, benefits,
pension, students and friends or
making a difference for learners

18. Sheridan College Ran My
Course
‘Speaking Canadian English’
Beginning of Term:
• Why don’t you speak English now?
• Students identified very few issues
• I promised to fix them - our contract
End of Term:
• What one thing made the difference?
• Again, there were very few answers
We’d found the patterns for Speaking English
When the course textbook English is Stupid was
published it sold over 5,000 copies in over 60
countries

19. TEDx Oakville
• I was invited to speak on TEDx, a
very new platform in 2009
• They’d heard I had an idea that
could change the world
• They meant the English Phonetic
Alphabet and the Color Chart
• I did Three Secrets You Need to
Know about Spoken English
• It had tips for learners, and native
English speakers need to know they
are part of the problem

20. Draw Me a
Picture
A professional
speaker asked
me to draw her
pictures of my
language
teaching ideas.
It was life-
changing.

21. Alone in the Wilderness
Many Opportunities Opened up for
me through LinkedIn
• Brazil
• Oxford University Press NYC
• HR Diversity and Inclusion
• Corporate rate$
• More books…
But, I got kicked out of every
LinkedIn group!

22. ③ Finding My Tribe
At First, There Weren’t Many of Us
• Peggy Tharpe – California
• Denise Eide – Minnesota
• Me – Niagara Falls, Canada
• Teresa Almeida d’Eca – Lisbon
• Jennifer England – Lleida
• Jason West – London
• Rita Baker – Lydbury
• Judit Angeli – Budapest
• Andrew Weiler - Melbourne

23. The Coolest Thing
Happened
I asked the pioneers
in the language
coaching industry I’d
met on LinkedIn if we
we could meet in
person and in 2012
we did!
Every Sunday
afternoon for the past
past 8 years, we still
do.

24. Rita Baker’s Global Approach
Every English grammar possibility can be plotted
on her three triangles. No exceptions.
This is Rita’s but the group shared similar experiences
• Immersed in teaching with a sense things could be done
better
• A bolt of lightening Aha Moment – Epiphany
• All pattern thinkers – what’s always true?
• Developed unique approaches
• All wrote books
• Until we found each other, we all felt very much alone
against the world

25. Disruptive Education
Conference
Toronto
• Anesh Daya – On the
Spot Language
• Speakers on Small
Business Marketing, ESL
and Technology, Accent
Reduction
• Think Tank Sunday –
participants identified
as coaches
• Introduced me to ILCA

26. I was an
Ugly Duckling
• Teachers are great, there is nothing wrong
with being a duck
• I am not a duck
• Accountability, customization, learner
driven… all that was missing was
accreditation
• Enter the International Language Coaching
Association with a professional coaching
program
• My Dad had OCD. There was no name for
that 50 years ago
• I am a Language Coach, 20 years ago
there was no such thing

27. In Summation
• We draw on our life experiences to teach
• We can look back on moments of crisis or clarity, either
way they change the direction of our careers and
ultimately make us better
• My turning points were
1. I couldn’t meet students’ needs with the training I’d
received
2. My values didn’t fit with my employer’s - I had to go
3. Finding like-minded individuals – pattern thinkers
It all worked out! I’m a successful Language Coach and my
tribe is YOU.

28. Thank you for attending!
Judy Thompson
judy@thompsonlanguagecenter.com
backpackersenglish.com
Big Thank You to Gabriella and Carrie for providing a
fantastic, much-needed teacher training service