Professional Development Summer Institute TESOL-Ukraine on Creative Writing
Lviv, June 30 – July 04, 2025
Oksana CHUGAI
TESOL-Ukraine is a non-governmental organization of dedicated educators working to improve English teaching nationwide. As an affiliate of TESOL, Inc., it promotes international standards, supports teacher development, and fosters global collaboration.
The 2025 TESOL-Ukraine Summer Institute, devoted to the topic “Word Magic: Creative Writing Lessons for the Language-Learning Classroom” was an immersive professional development event designed to empower educators through the transformative power of creative writing. About 40 educators from all over Ukraine came to Lviv and spent a productive week in the Scientific Library of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, where the event took place.
This unique event featured two keynote trainers: internationally acclaimed poet and Fulbright Scholar Cecilia Woloch (The USA) and a teacher of English, teacher trainer, publisher and author Mark Powell (Great Britain), joined by leading Ukrainian educators. Participants engaged in hands-on workshops, collaborative sessions, and gained practical strategies for integrating creative writing into the language-learning classroom.
Program Outline:
● Story Coach! Storytelling Tools & Techniques from Kindergarten to Corporate
● Angel Baby Blues: A Catalogue of Memories
● Life Stories in Miniature: The Micro-Memoir
● Writing with All Senses: A Multimodal Journey into Storytelling
● First-Person Writing that Brings Stories to Life: Learning through Place
● From One Line to a Narrative: Stories from a Given Sentence
● The Story Circle: Weaving Words, Building Bonds
● Roll, Write, Solve: Dice-Based Creative Writing
|● Designing Creative Writing Competitions: Making the Magic Work
● Final project “Takeaway Treasures: Words, Wisdom, and Wonder”
The 2025 TESOL-Ukraine Summer Institute in Lviv was a unique opportunity to learn something new about teaching writing, using it as a tool for revealing creative potential and connecting with fellow professionals. It was also an emotional retreat for educators at the end of the academic year.
