Dale Coulter: The Dogme Generation
My last video interview (not counting the snippet of Scott Thornbury) was with Vicky Loras and was posted on 23rd October, a solid two months ago! These words may ring a bell to those of you old enough…
I was around when Jesus Christ
had his moment of doubt and pain
Well, it got to be a little like that… until people such as Brad Patterson and David Dodgson nominated iAskU for the Edublog Awards, and that gave me a much-needed boost of motivation. So, to sort of compensate for the lack of output this past couple of months, I’m offering a double bill! Two for the price of none becomes the square of two for the price of none!
First one up is someone with the devil-may-care attitude of youth, but blessed with the intelligence and wisdom of someone much further down the linear age line, or as Luke Meddings expostulated in the iTDi webinar recently, the not-so-linear age line. If you haven’t heard of Dale Coulter, it’s about time you had; and if you have, I’m sure you’d agree that he’s worth 26 minutes of our time, wouldn’t you?
Dale also mentioned a few people, and I’d also recommend checking them out:
Anthony Gaughan: Interview & blog
Adam Beale: blog
Luke Meddings: blog
Bio
My name is Dale Coulter and I’m an English teacher, born in Reading, near London in the UK and now residing in Rome. For the past two and a half years I’ve been teaching English in both London and Italy and not a day has passed that I haven’t woken up in the morning looking forward to going to work.
I am a keen fan of unplugged approaches to teaching and started using Dogme soon after qualifying. I find it’s the approach which accomodates my beliefs about teaching, that it’s a process of ‘pulling out’ information rather than ‘putting it in’. Lately I’ve found myself participating more in the online ELT world, writing my blog, keeping in touch and sharing ideas on twitter and also speaking at conferences around Europe.
I am constantly committed to pushing myself to the edge of my comfort zone, for it is only here that you really develop and improve.
Dale’s twitter handle: @dalecoulter
Dale’s blog: Language Moments
For the geeks:
Dale’s end:
Macbook, internal webcam and moviemaker
Chiew’s end:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS62
Quicktime Pro v7.7 (1680.34)
AVS Video Editor v5.2.0.169
Posted on 23 December 2011, in Uncategorized and tagged Anthony Gaughan, Chia Suan Chong, Dale Coulter, dogme. Bookmark the permalink. 15 Comments.
iasku 
BRILLIANT! I think you are BOTH an inspiration to a lot of us, especially those, like me, outside a physical ELT community.
Keep doing what you are doing and we will all keep reading!
Merry Xmas.
Thank you, Phil! But do you know that YOU are also an inspiration for us all? Except for the fact that you aren’t willing to step out of your comfort zone, from your comfy chair to the hot seat…! 😉
Enjoyed listening very much. Thank you to both Dale and Chiew for it. It’s inspiring to see young teachers so into their profession. =)
Thanks for coming, Ty, and I’m glad you enjoyed it. It is indeed fabulous to see young teachers enjoying their work, and if more old hands were to get connected, they might just realise how much they can learn from these “kids”! 😉
Hi guys,
Great interview and very interesting to hear about Dale’s (short but successful) career to date. I just wish my CELTA tutor had written ‘dogme’ on the board near the end of the course (but I guess it was just a short Scott Thornbury article back then and not a ‘movement’ as it is now!)
I also noted a lot of similar experiences – university history student to TEFL teacher, committed blogger who is also a bit on the disorganised side… I’ll stop short of triathlon ambitions though!
Dave
Thanks for taking time off to pop in, Dave. Strange how quite a few of us would confess to being disorganised! Perhaps it is one of the reasons why we blog in the first place!
Thanks for taking the trouble everyone to leave a comment.
Dave my new year’s resolution is to become more organised. I’m taking it year by year, little by little, I figure that by the time I am thirty I’ll be sorted. That’s the idea anyway! What period of history did you end up specialising in at university.
Phil, as far as outsiders go, you’re one who offers a whole lot of support, even it’s from the Indian Ocean!
Thanks again to everyone for watching and to Chiew for making all this possible.
Hi Dale,
Funnily enough (considering your current location) my specialist period was Ancient Rome – but of course, you knew that already from watching my iasku interview 😉
I have only spent a day in Rome itself (and that was some 12 years ago) but I did spend a couple of weeks in Italy, mainly in Florence and the nightmare that was Milan train station! I would love to return to Rome some day – it is a popular destination for short holidays from Turkey so, who knows, I may well make my way back there soon and pester you for a slice of pizza. 🙂
Mmm, one Julius Caesar perhaps can be tolerated, but two of him? Worse, if they’re sharing a pizza! Hehe 😉 Anyway, we get quite a few of them come Carnival time, which is soon…
The only time I was in Rome, they tried to pickpocket my wife in the tube, but luckily, I was too wise for them 😉
Great interview! Great questions and lots and lots to remember and think about it the answers. Thanks both 🙂
Thanks Ceri, and now over to you… 🙂
What a fascinating interview! I really enjoyed listening to the way things developed for you Dale, especially as Chiew asked all the right questions!
Not sure about one thing though, if I may be a “Nudnik”, LOL!
Your involvement in Dogme at such an early stage of your career doesn’t necessarily break the myth that young / new teachers can’t use Dogme. In my opinion it breaks the myth that there is an age, a gender or a country of origin for using Dogme. It’s all about personality, a certain drive, I think.
Thanks to both of you for a great interview!
Glad you enjoyed it, Naomi, and thanks for coming. 🙂
Naomi. You know you’re completely right, there’s not set time at which teachers can use Dogme. That’s not to say that it’s early or late, or ever. It was just something i heard a lot at the start of my career “but a newly qualified teacher couldn’t do this”. Like you say, it depends on the drive and personality and above all I think it depends on one’s belief about how a language is learned.
thanks so much for watching.
Dale
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