Annual General Meeting

ELTABB Statutes

Last Year's Minutes

Board Member Reports: 2020

2020 was such a difficult and trying year for all, and I am happy that we are on the other side. ELTABB survived and creatively found ways to serve the membership in a year of moving most of our work as trainers online. Read more about our year in review.

Because of everything moving digital, there was a renewed active cooperation with many of the other ELTAs (English Language Teachers Associations) around Germany through co-organized online events. Also, the year saw a surge in the presence and activity of our social media thanks to Yuliya Shtaltovna and the newly formed communications team.

The membership intake process on the back end was made easier thanks to Stephanie Anderson and Ryan O’Shea’s work. Part of that process was launching a new website, and a big thanks goes to Stephanie Anderson for overseeing that project.

The ELTABB Journal continued and flourished thanks to Sandra Roggenkamp´s efforts and vision. Kit Flemming has also joined the journal team.

The ELTABB Scholarship Fund was offered and used for a second year. Thanks to Vicky Allan for overseeing and the ELTABB scholarship committee for your help. The following ELTABBer‘s applied for and received a portion each from the 2020 Scholarship fund: Kit Flemons, Phoebe Blackburn, Ken Powell, and Christopher Chandler.

I want to thank all the board members and active volunteers for all their creative efforts and hard work. Without all their dedicated help, ELTABB wouldn’t be! Have a look at the other reports to see how much they have contributed and what has been offered to the membership in 2020. I am proud of everyone and their efforts in such a complicated and trying year.

This year was of course a tricky one for the Events Team, which was made up of Steph Anderson, Galina Khinchuk, Breanna Alexander, Thomas Samain and Brandon Ezzell.
 
After having to very quickly modify our 2020 AGM in February to the developing situation, we moved the rest of year’s workshops online. In those early days of the pandemic, we also tried to offer our members some immediate help by offering workshops on online teaching, accessing the social assistance programs available to teachers in Germany, and learning how to use online teaching platforms such as Zoom. 
 
While we missed welcoming speakers to Berlin and holding face-to-face workshops and Stammtische — critical ways that keep Eltabbers sane and connected in a normal year — we worked hard to continue offering valuable professional development, networking, and social opportunities to our members.
 
In fact, we held even more events in 2020 than usual:
  • 11 workshops
  • 8 Stammtische
  • 1 Staff Room
  • the first-ever Inter-Elta Members Day Conference.
One great upshot of the year was collaborating with the other six ELTAs in Germany. Sharing our workshops and organizing events together will hopefully become a permanent part of ELTABB’s program, long after this strange and strenuous year is behind us. 
 
All in all, it was a wonderful/horrible year – horrible for all the reasons you might expect (and experienced yourself), but wonderful for the sense of community that came out of it all, making being part of ELTABB more important than ever. 
 
-Annie Heringer, Events Coordinator 2019-2020
 
 

This was a rough year for organizing Stammtische, but I was determined to find ways of having our monthly social meet-ups. Zoom get-togethers were held from March to May and we were able to have a Stammtisch at Parkcafe’ Berlin in June. Since it was nearly impossible to find outdoor areas and Biergärten that took reservations (along with all of the other COVID regulations), I decided to have socially-distanced picnics at various parks in Berlin. The July picnic in Tiergarten had a Pride/CSD theme to celebrate our LGBTQIA+ members, and the August picnic was held at the Volkspark Jungfernheide. As it turns out, I was accepted for a full-time teaching job at RWTH University and moved to Aachen in September. I really enjoyed hosting the Stammtische for ELTABB these past couple of years and will miss it and you all terribly! I would also like to thank Sabrina Bechler for starting them up again, and I hope that once things are safe that the Stammtische can continue as they are vital.”

This was my first year as Treasurer. I meant this to be a year where I didn’t change any processes before I knew what they were, and how the association functioned. 

The role is in the background and takes care of the transactional side of ELTABB. As such, I wanted to get speaker fees off in a timely manner and make sure income and expenses are tracked efficiently and accurately.

It was a pleasure to welcome Thomas and Vicky to my place in the summer for the first audit. 

Next year we intend to change our accountancy and membership system based on excel and move to a system specifically designed for associations in Germany. This will reduce clicks, keystrokes, and errors, and will allow Membership and Treasury to focus more on members than boxes. 

A full report of the budget will be presented to members at the AGM. 

Despite a trying year, our membership has stood strong. We gained 18 new members in 2020, including several members from neighboring countries who wanted to participate in the great online workshops on offer through the German ELTAs. 

We also made joining ELTABB a little bit easier by updating our website and including an online membership form. 

In addition, we kept our members — both past and present — better informed via our monthly newsletters, which are sent out the first Tuesday of each month. 

Finally, I want to thank Kit Flemons who took over the ELTABBer of the Month interviews and has done a great job helping us all get to know each other a bit better. 

After a promising start in 2019, the ELTABB Journal continued to gain momentum in 2020. Over the course of the year, we published 28 articles — including workshop reviews, interviews and posts on hot topics, such as online networking and valuable digital tools for ESL professionals. Kudos to all of our committed contributors, as well as to Stephanie Anderson and Kit Flemons who joined the editorial team and saved the day more than once. 🙂

First stats results on 2020 social media performance
On LinkedIn, we reached 160 followers (140 new) thanks to 60 posts which attracted 350+ unique followers and with such Background as Higher Education, Professional Training & Coaching, Education Management, E-Learning. We increased the visibility of our posts from 300 average in Dec-May up to average 1000 unique impressions during June-Dec.

On Twitter we dramatically improved our visibility and look what are the results 1000 people follow our updates!! We increased:

  • the average number of tweets per month from 5 in Q1 to 30 in Q4
  • Monthly Tweet impressions soared from 2K in Q1 to 8K in Q4
  • Visitor who checked out our profile page: from 15 monthly in Q1 to 500 in Q4 and stayed to follow our Twitter from 3 in Q1 to 15 in Q4 each month and even started mentioning our ELTABB page (up to 30 times in Nov) and reposting our content!

This is all thanks to everyone’s efforts aligned in our new Media Strategy that we adopted in June to reformat the teamwork making it more agile and distributed.

(Please note: this was a non-Board position in 2020, but will be added to the 2021 Board.)

Web Administrator
The big news to report from the web administration space in 2020 was the revamping of our website (www.eltabb.com) to make it much more visually appealing and user-friendly, including by adding an online membership form. This project was largely driven by Stephanie Anderson (Membership Coordinator).

Social Media Coordinator
2020 was a big year in the social media (and communications) space.
Guided by a new communications strategy focussing on teamwork and wider exposure, the newly- formed Communications team (Yuliya Shtaltovna, Stephanie Anderson, Sandra Roggenkamp, Ken Powell, Kit Flemons) were very active in promoting ELTABB – especially our events, journal, and scholarship – across several social media channels. These included Facebook, Meetup, Twitter and LinkedIn.
As at 31 January 2021, ELTABB had:

  • 844 Facebook followers
  • 906 Twitter followers
  • 168 LinkedIn followers
  • 188 Meetup members

Please join us on these platforms if you haven’t already, to catch all the latest news from us!

Board Candidates

 

At the Annual General Meeting, we will hold elections for 2021 ELTABB Board Members.

If you are interested in any of the following volunteer positions, please email a short statement of interest to our current chair, Sarah, at thechair@eltabb.com

  • Chair 
  • Vice-Chair
  • Treasurer 
  • Recording Secretary 
  • Events Team Coordinator
  • Communications Team Coordinator
  • Editorial Team Coordinator
 
Additionally, we’re looking to add enthusiastic members to the following teams of volunteers:  
  • Editorial team 
  • Events team 
  • Communications team
Below are the candidate statements from members who have already expressed interest in joining the Board. You can send a statement to thechair@eltabb.com in advance, or prepare a statement to read at the AGM. 

Candidate Statements: 2021

Christopher Chandler

Candidate for Chair
I’m Christopher Chandler, and I am a business English trainer. I have been a member for seven years and value the opportunities for professional development and networking. I have been on the Board before. I started up the monthly newsletter and was the Treasurer for two years. I would be very happy to support a hard-working team as the 2021 Chair of ELTABB.

Candidate for Vice-Chair and Communications Coordinator

Within the Outreach Team, we try our best to sustain ELTABB digital communities and deliver information about ELTABB events and scholarships to the wider public through social media, namely Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Meetup as well as through the ELTABB website and newsletter.

I’m Yuliya Shtaltovna. I’ve been an ELTABB member since Oct 2019, and I value the support and professional development this community brings to its membership, immensely multiplied in the uncertain times of the pandemic.

I would like to continue on in the role I’ve had for a year now and bring in my experience and a business attitude in building up communication and teams at the Vice-Chair level.

Candidate for Treasurer

I’m Ryan O’Shea. From 2002 until 2018 I worked in ELT as a teacher and managed branches of a school called Wall Street English here in Berlin. I learned a lot about learning, people, and business in that time. These days I’ll still take the occasional client, but I now spend my time building websites.

Since joining in 2017 I have come to value the other members most. Some of the most pointed professional advice comes from those who have similar experiences to share and learn from.

I’m not involved in day to day teaching but I have experience in making regular reports and making processes more efficient. I want to bring more of that to this role in 2021.

Candidate for Recording Secretary 

I’m Ken Powell and (mostly) teach business and legal English when in Berlin, and work as a lawyer when I’m back in Australia. I’ve been a member of ELTABB since 2019, and have really enjoyed the benefits of networking and continuing professional development that come with being an ELTABB member.

I was previously a board member (Web Administrator and Social Media Coordinator) in 2019 and continued in this role – although in a non-board capacity – in 2020. I’m staying on as Web Administrator (non-board position) in 2021 and am also nominated for the board position of Recording Secretary. I’d like to think that my experience of furiously scribbling down notes during court hearings makes me well-suited to this board position, but the truth is that my ability to operate a keyboard and computer will put me in much better stead.

Candidate for Events Team Coordinator

Hello there! I’m Sandra Roggenkamp. I’ve been an ELTABB member for three years and the Journal editor for two. What I like most about the association is the friendly and supportive yet professional atmosphere.

In my editorial role, I’ve learned a lot about collaboration and networking. As Events Coordinator, I hope to organise engaging workshops that will broaden our members’ horizons and be remembered with a smile.

Candidate for Editorial Team Coordinator

I’m Kit Flemons! I’m an English teacher (as I’m sure you guessed). I currently work in a few schools across Berlin, teaching children’s English and general English. I’m also studying Business English with the FTBE study group, working as the ELTABB blog editor, and I have been helping out with the Journal a bit recently. 

I’ve been a member for about two years now. It’s been great for meeting new people, making useful contacts, and taking part in training and learning opportunities through the workshops and the FTBE study group. In a big city like Berlin, ELTABB offers an awful lot to help me stand out from the competition!

I’d like to take on this role because I am interested in giving something back to ELTABB as best I can. I think my strongest suit lies in writing and editing (rather than say…accountancy or organising events!) so this seems a good fit for me to contribute.