I am from Coimbra, Portugal, and am currently teaching in a school in Soure, about 30 km away from Coimbra. I have been a teacher of English for over 20 years and have already taught different levels and age groups. After all this time I can say I love working with adult groups because there are no coursebooks and I can create my own resources.
I am an avid reader, a blogger and very curious about free tools and their implementation in the classroom.
Phew! This has been quite a Summer! I've spent part of my holidays busy with my report that I handed out today, just in time for the beginning of a new school year.
All this time though I just couldn't help thinking... how do I measure success / my own success on a daily basis? How do YOU measure it? In a world that demands instant success and "evidence", how do we, educators, measure it? I can tell when my students are motivated, when they start asking questions and making associations but, unlike other professions, I guess we have to wait years, even decades to know if we are successful, if we managed to pass on the knowledge we were supposed to and if they can appropriately apply it; if we managed to make a difference in the lives of our students, instill hope for their dreams, support and care for them. So much, Gosh! Surely every teacher in Portugal is now overworked and underpaid but we still strive each day to deal with challenging students, the pressure of higher test scores and curricular mandates and still can't be sure if we are successful...
Anyway, enough digression and time to cheer up... let's pray and bear together for another school year :)
Allan Ahlberg in The Puffin Book of Utterly Brilliant Poetry edited by Brian Patten
On August 15th I posted here about my summer readings and mentioned I was reading EAT PRAY LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert; by then I also posted the trailer of its film adaptation and later left a very short comment here. Well, yesterday off to the cinema I went but not alone :))))) We were a large group of forty (teachers and adult learners of English) and really had a nice time - as always -watching Julia Roberts learning Italian (and Italian gestures), slurping spaghetti, desperately trying to wear trousers that weren't definitely her size any more, chanting (or trying to) in Sanskrit, meeting a toothless medicine man,...and always surrounded by nice and/or good looking men, real hotties, I would say ;)) Lucky woman!
ELIZABETH GILBERT
Image Credit: wikipedia.org
As I said before in my wallwisher, I loved this autobiographical book: a divorcee's epic search around the world for inner peace. Of course we can always question her reasons to do it but in what the book is concerned, it is personal and rich in spiritual insight. Liz Gilbert is sometimes hilarious and has a great sense of humour. As far as I am concerned, I found her writing captivating and her travelogue exciting. As for the film, we have the privilege of having a glimpse of all the beautiful and fascinating places she went to (Italy, India and Indonesia) as well as their cultures - worlds apart, obviously!
As you might have noticed, I've been much into reading these days...alongside my eldest kid, we've been ordering books and reading for hours and hours. That's what holidays are for, right? To do whatever pleases you; what you can't usually do or spend much time doing during the schoolyear.
The official BookCrossing logo
Though I usually don't get rid of my books (but am keen on lending them), I've become more and more interested in BookCrossing, "the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise." (in Wikipedia). In a different scale, it works somehow as a classroom library just like many have already experienced, mostly in our mother tongue.
Then, why not do the same in our EFL classes? And I don't mean just one class, the more classes involved, the better! I know you might ask where to get enough / varied stories for different grades. Well, I've already bought many myself but why not ask the learners themselves to bring in some money so that you may choose some graded readers? I also know we are in a crisis and in suburban areas to ask parents for some extra money can be painful... Another possibility is still the school library: why not approaching the school librarian and asking him/her if there is enough budget for your choice of books? It's not hard to try and... who knows?
Anyway, right now I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert following a suggestion by a very dear and old friend of mine - and, yes, a blogger as well (click here). As usual, these "teacher's eyes" (don't you also believe teachers see and appreciate things differently???) are wide open and I'll post here a few lines on it as soon as I've finished. There is still another reason for my choice... it was not at random that I ordered the aforementioned American bestseller: 30th September is the release date for the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoirs starring Julia Roberts as Gilbert and Javier Bardem as Felipe - and these two alone are already reason enough to be willing to see it, don't you agree? ;)
Well, school isn't too far for many of us now and it's time to start outlining new activities - maybe based on this book and / or film... these teacher's eyes are and will be open (I hope for a long time). I'll leave you now with the trailer:
