Борзых|Unstoppable CPD~Неудержимое Развитие Учителя

I don’t want English teachers to feel lonely 💚 We spend so much time connecting with our students, but we often end up alone with our own questions, doubts, and fatigue. Sometimes you just want to message a colleague: What would you do in this situation? Any material recommendations? Who else is sick of checking homework late into the night? Or simply share a cool phrase you caught in a film/podcast. That’s why Alexandra Dunaeva and I are creating a Telegram community for English teachers 🎉 Inside, you’ll be able to: ✨ practise live English every week with Curtis, a native speaker, and stop worrying that your own level is slipping because you work with children or lower-level students ✨ explore up-to-date vocabulary, idioms and pronunciation ✨ discuss real-life teaching situations ✨ get materials and resources we’ve developed, including ones from Delta ✨ master AI tools for your work ✨ share experiences, get inspired and, sometimes, just have a good moan. Cause do need it from time to time!) We welcome teachers of any experience level. The main thing is a desire to grow and develop.🌟 The membership fee is currently 1,500 ₽ a month. If you feel you’ve been missing exactly this kind of professional circle, send me a private message or drop a ➕ in the comments. I’ll share all the details 🤗

No filters. Happy birthday to me! 🥳🎈🎂 Happy to be celebrating it in Tbilisi.

Death by lesson planning. So familiar. I used to spend from 4 to 6 hours on a single lesson prep. And they sucked. Then, I really learned about lesson outcomes - and lesson steps. Not the buzzwords. The realzies. Since I’m a slow learner, it didn’t happen overnight. I tired, stumbled, made mistakes, but I kept going. How to spend less time on preparing games and have more engagement in the class? My rule of thumb when it comes to lesson planning: 1️⃣see the big picture first (why are they learning English? What’s their point B? And C?) 2️⃣See the nearest milestone (on the roadmap from A to 😎 3️⃣ What language subskills need most work right now? 4️⃣What content can I employ to teach those skills? Now, the fun part. Don’t reinvent the wheel - check for that content, perhaps it’s already out there - and you can adapt it to your learners. I mean, don’t spend hours writing games/activities - just google for them. And use current textbooks. Alternatevely, adapt your textbook with AI. I constantly learn about current methodology to stay on top of my game - and this really helps to minimize lesson planning - because I know where the student is going. I understand what is happening in their head. And from my reading I know whether it’s okay or we need to change tack. Stop preaching and give me the tools! Sure. I’ll be happy to share my books, ideas and online resources here in comments: Provide your context: age, level, aims + type of English (general, business, exam, ESP, etc) If you have a specific question, reach out to me personally @ielts_tutor_nb Let’s free up valuable teacher time! ♥️ inspired by @infoasis

Small no more. I've been working a lot to get my numbers: conferences, certificates, books, trips, contacts. But honestly? Those ain't everything) After achieving my Delta, I faced a wave of burnout so powerful it made me feel as if earning it was insignificant. Insignificant. Ever been there? Collected all the shiny things, built the network, stacked the credentials… and still felt hollow? And I realised that from that point, regardless of what I do, I would be small. Because I was small. How did I know? Apathy after a win. Exhaustion that no amount of sleep could fix. Desire to climb the next mountain... Sound familiar? I had neglected my body, my emotions, and most importantly, myself. And only after I learned to actually notice myself, have I seen a shift. Since 2020, working with teachers has shown me a common struggle: self-neglect, overwork, and burnout. So what do I actually do now? 🔺I check in with my body before I check my messages. 🔺I set boundaries even when they feel uncomfortable. 🔺I remind myself daily: my worth is not my output. Not my conferences, not my certificates, not the books I read, not my contacts. Recovery isn't a luxury. It's the only way I keep going without breaking. But the real question is when was the last time you actually noticed you? Like, really stopped, looked in the mirror, and asked how you're doing? It took me hitting empty to finally get that. 💔 And I know that shift is absolutely possible. Because I lived it. Only you can make a difference in your life. Small no more. That's the line I keep coming back to. What's yours? Inspired by @infOasis

We sold a course live on stage. Right after, we broke down exactly why you wanted to buy it. This weekend, Ekaterina Safonova and I gave a talk about CPD. Why we do it. And what we pay for it. ⚡ We kicked off with a Delta-style test. Four questions. I didn't tell anyone, but I'd completely made up two of them, mashed some terminology together, and framed it all as Let's check your professionalism. These kind of tests bring in the impostor. Then we brought in a third speaker, the wonderful Alexandra Kondratyeva. We imitated a live call, selling a course. In her script, we had coded in 19 different marketing tactics, and three most prominet were scarcity, low financial barrier, framing. After the call, Katerina and I unpacked it. Why did you buy it? Because the course promised me help raise my prices. That was the hook. So I asked: Is your current education not enough? Do you really need another certificate just to set a higher rate? Do you have to suffer more, pay more, burn out more—just to charge what you're worth, today? We really have to think about this. Obviously, I'm all for professional teachers. Professionalism matters. But the industry is so good at sniffing out our impostor syndrome. And it sells us course after course that we don't actually need. We burn out studying, on top of burning out in the classroom by working too hard. We also shared some research we did: teachers' qualifications, experience, and their prices. The uncomfortable truth is there's almost zero link between how qualified you are and what you charge. It's really sad. Honestly, very sad. ❗️One thing stood out: students, especially adults, are often ready to pay more. We just aren't asking. We're scared to. I think that has to change. If you'd like the slides, just say the word and I'll send them over. Thanks for reading. 💛

Tomorrow I'm doing a joint talk with Ekaterina Safonova at SELF-9. We're going to be questioning something that doesn't get talked about enough: is the CPD we invest in as teachers really necessary, given what we actually pay for it? And I don't just mean the literal price, as in the course fees, the subscription costs, the conference tickets that quietly eat into our income. I mean the metaphorical price too. The hours we give up. The mental load. The nagging sense that if we don't keep buying the next thing, we're somehow falling behind. We'll be sharing research we've carried out among both teachers and students: what do we feel we're getting (or not getting), and what do our clients even notice? Spoiler: the answers might make us rethink a few things. I'm really looking forward to opening up this conversation. If you're around tomorrow, will I see you in the audience?

Here are the results!! We started working together in February, and she took her first TOEFL in mid-May, scoring a 3.0 in Writing and a 5.5 in Speaking. Mind you, a 6.0 is the absolute maximum in TOEFL Just under a month later, in June, she sat for the exam again and raised her Writing score to an impressive 4.0, landing an Overall Score of 100 (C1)! 🎉 [that was the initial request] Her Speaking was on track to improve as well, but she ran into technical difficulties with her laptop during that section, which understandably affected her final mark. Given the circumstances, she handled it like a true hero. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with her, and I’m especially grateful that we got to explore the new TOEFL format together. Exams change, but adapting to them is what keeps us growing—and that’s the beauty of evolution! 🌱

So, in my last post I talked about the new things they added to the TOEFL exam. This time I want to focus on my student and her biggest struggle: stress. Honestly, she was so pressed for time. Especially in the email task. You know, you only get 7 minutes. Seven. And she said, she would just freeze. She had to do the task again and again and again and again because it was really hard for her to focus. The clock was just killing her. I was praying to gods for her assiduousness!! 🙏🙏🙏 So what we did was we made similar tasks. Like, email-style tasks. She wrote maybe ten emails, one after another. And I gave feedback on every single one. Yes, it was time-consuming. But that was so worth it!! That repetition, it really helped. She started to understand the pattern. More than that, she started to feel confident. And once she had that confidence, she could actually focus on the task. And then her writing got much better. Much. We did the same thing with the other writing part. Like the the post-submission task. Same idea. Again and again, with feedback. In the next post I’m going to share her actual TOEFL results. So, what do you think she scored? Keep in mind, she is lower-advanced. Drop your guess in the comments! I’ll be back with the number soon. P.S. the photo shows all the new TOEFL timings.

Wait, TOEFL added email writing in 7 minutes? 😳 In February 2026, I got a new student - and that’s how I discovered the updated format. Here’s what hit me hardest: 📧 Email writing – 7 min 💬 Discussion post writing – 10 min So, basically, you don’t have time to breathe. Plus, there’s Listen and Repeat task. 🤨 The test is super intense. If you’re ambitious for a high score, you’re technically beating the clock. But here’s the flip side I didn’t expect: 🔄 Lots of different tasks & fresh starts → higher test validity 🧠 Lower cognitive load → the test is checking your English, not your intelligence ⚡ It’s dynamic, fast, and it adapts — which can actually work in your favour In my next post, I’ll share what my advanced-level polyglot student struggled with most; and she speaks Russian, Dutch, and Indonesian. 🇷🇺🇳🇱🇮🇩 Stay tuned. This series is just getting interesting. 👀

Elusive as ever: I promised a podcast and then disappeared. Well, I went to Trendy St Pete and then on family vacation! Here’s the podcast 🔽 If useful, please let me know with your reactions