Can Teachers Teach (Teachers) Without Materials?

Teacher Trainers Part 1: Continued Development for Development Continuers

The first time I taught without any materials it was unplanned. For that matter, most of the times I taught without materials, during the first several years of my career, it was unplanned. It was basically because I’d forgotten (the materials at home, to plan the lesson, or some combination of both).

Has this happened to you before? There’s a brand of teacher that this never happens to—and another brand that this has happened to, well, a bit too often to consider it to be just a fluke.

Brought to Bay

The first time I trained teachers without materials, though, it was planned. I’d always improvised, gone off script, and adapted to evolving situations as a trainer, but I’d never gone into a training room without any materials at all. Until the summer of 2025.

Lots of things were happening to me on a personal level in the summer of 2025, most of which are too heavy to go into on a blog post like this one. Suffice it to say that my life had been turned upside down, absolutely and completely, except for my professional life: there I was, as usual, in Casablanca, running a CELTA course. And feeling that I was put upon, brought to bay, boxed in everywhere else in my life, I concluded that there was one place where I knew I could break free, if I had the guts: in the training classroom.

Breaking out of the Trap

In the years since I’d accidentally taught materials-free, I’d learned of a method that aims to enable to teachers to teach “materials-light.” This method, called Dogme, is based on the idea that increasing authentic relations with students (materials sometimes get in the way) and bringing greater focus on “emerging language” (materials sometimes get in the way) are essential in supporting language learning in the classroom.

Emerging language is the language that is just beyond students’ ability to use. The idea is that by using fewer materials, and by planning minimally, teachers can be more attentive to students’ language production, and respond to it by teaching exactly what students need. Its primary “tool” is conversation, and the aim is to instill a sense of freedom and potential in the classroom. I’ve taught using Dogme many times since my more accidental forays into materials-free teaching, and I’ve discovered it to be more than just wildly effective: it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.

Building the Tower

Training teachers without materials wasn’t about emergent language. It was, to a large extent, about generating greater authenticity in my relationship with my trainees.

Authenticity is a word that gets bandied about quite a bit, so I think it’s worth a little detour to say what I mean by it exactly. Here, for me, authenticity isn’t about being myself, or getting in touch with myself, or related in any way at all to myself. Strange as it may seem, I’ve never really believed in myself; I don’t mean that I’m in doubt of my abilities, I mean I don’t really believe my self exists. (I’ve never seen proof of my existence, just signs that I have existed.)

Authenticity can be about relationships, though. It’s a quality of a relationship that increases the rate of reaction between people. I’m more sensitive to you, you’re more sensitive to me.

That kind of relationship increases trust, and trust opens the mind, and an open mind is a mind that learns.

Coming into the training room with no materials tells your trainees that it’s all about them. It’s not about the hand-outs you’ve printed that you have to get through because that’s your plan for the road you’ve decided to lead them down. It’s about knowing where you want your trainees to go, and deciding to discover the path forward together.

You, the trainer, are taking big risks by coming into the classroom in this way. Learners take risks by opening their minds to new things. Equal risk, equal trust. Trainees and trainer learn together.

Reaching for the Sky

Doing it once or twice during our CELTA course might have been interpreted, though, as that exact type of “fluke” from earlier in my career. Training materials-free had to be seen as a conscious decision on my part. And trainees needed to see that there was a reason why I was doing it. I made this explicit by telling them what I was doing, and the reason why I was doing it.

And that reason is perhaps the most important thing trainers teach their trainees in any teacher training course: that professional (and personal) development never ends. I had never (deliberately) taught materials free before. And now I was going to do it for the entire course, with no exceptions.

Teachers will see that a teacher who is “top of his game,” which is how most TEFL trainees see their CELTA trainers, hasn’t stopped taking risks in order to continue to improve. In a profession that many people are attracted to because of the feeling of power they get when they stand in front of the classroom, it’s possible to relinquish all of the “power” accumulated over decades of practice, to try something new, and to continue to learn—just as we, as teachers, want to encourage our students to continue to take risks, in order to continue to learn.

Learning a language is intrinsically risky, and so teachers model risk-taking for their students. To encourage our teachers to continue to take risks, trainers can model risk-taking as well.

Leaving the Tower Behind

Trainers can do this in a variety of ways. My way was new to me: I had never seen another trainer do materials-free input throughout an entire CELTA course (though I know it has been done). I didn’t know how to do it before I’d begun. I brainstormed with my colleagues every night, and their support was instrumental in achieving this goal.

Thanks, Aysel and Kadir!

For other trainers, it doesn’t have to be such a big leap, or the same type of shift in approach. Some trainers have always avoided doing pronunciation inputs because they’re insecure about their pronunciation; others are used to using PowerPoint in each session, to the point that PPT is synonymous with teacher training. Reflecting on what we can do to continue to take risks in the classroom is a key feature of the successful teacher trainer.

But there’s also a personal aspect to all of this. Taking risks improves authenticity, and arguably improves outcomes in the long term. For me, in particular in the summer of ’25, it was imperative, because my life had spun completely out of control. Taking this risk was a means of regaining control. I wasn’t just improving trust in the classroom; I was restoring trust in myself.

And that’s what I call a big win.