This session was hosted by Rachael Roberts/ELT Freelance Professionals Lightbulb Moments/Earn, Learn, Thrive. (Link is to the Facebook Group that Rachael manages, where this session was advertised.)

Trish started with a little breathing exercise, breathing in and out 3 times. 3 breaths stop. Take 3 deep breaths, releasing each one fully. A little break from where we were to the present moment. Any time you need a quick reset, you can do your 3 breaths, without anyone even noticing. A quick, simple technique to learn and use – before a class, before a meeting.

She asked us “Where is your mind?”. We are often on autopilot. She told us a story of how she drove from home to ballet on autopilot and had no recollection how she got there. It’s very easy not to pay attention to what is happening. And before you know it, you’ve had 5 chocolate biscuits from the packet. Regular tasks can be done without fully engaging brains but it doesn’t help us with fully living our lives. Our bodies are here but where are our minds? We live in the story of me. We might be in the past thinking about regrets or anger or frustration. Going over and over things. Or we might be in the future worrying about something that will happen, or fearing it. The story of “what if…”

The mind is its own place and in itself can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell (John Milton). We can be in a tricky situation but if we can give ourselves space to be with what is, it can be a situation that we can gracefully take ourselves through. Our minds create our reality. How many thoughts do you think you might have in a day? is the next question. Research says we have up to 70,000 thoughts in a day, which is incredible when you think about it. Most of our thoughts are not real. Mindfulness helps us become more aware of our thoughts and emotions for what they are, thoughts and emotions not facts.

John Kabat-Zinn – “Mindfulness means to pay attention on purpose in the present moment non-judgementally.” We did a short bodyscan and I nodded off, oops. It is also a simple practice moving your attention from one body part to another to another and focusing your attention on it non-judgementally. Next she asks us to remember a stressful moment. That creates stress in our bodies. Our brains can’t tell the difference between imagining difficult things and having to deal with difficult things. So we get the same stress response by thinking about things as by experiencing things. The stress reponse activates the nervous system.

We take a few minutes to deal with that stress before we move on, by doing a short breathing practice called the 3-6 practice. Breathe in to the count of 3, breathe out to the count of 6. The parasympathetic nervous system is activated by this and activating it tells your body that it is in a safe state. Making the outbreath longer than the inbreath calms the stress system.

Next she wants to talk about stress. She asks us what comes to mind when we think about stress. All the comments are about the negative aspects of stress e.g. time pressure, anxiety, overwhelm. But the stress system actually evolved to keep us alive. It gets us active in order to deal with a threat. Short term stress is fine, long-term stress can be a problem. Short term it energises us, focuses us; it is a short cycle after which we can return to balance. Long term stress is when it becomes chronic and then it can lead to illness, exhaustion, low performance and you can’t see the big picture. In the modern world, the stress system is triggered many times a day by external stressors e.g. deadlines, meetings, tricky people, pandemics and internal stressors e.g. our thoughts and emotions. Usually a combination of both. We are hard-wired to seek out the negative/danger. If there are a dozen good things and one bad thing, we will tend to focus on the one bad thing.

Mindfulness helps us break the stress cycle and avoid getting into a chronic stress state. We pay attention, notice, things like tension in shoulders and jaw, and take a few minutes to do a body scan or some 3-6 breathing and break the cycle by returning to a calm state. The strategies are mindfulness techniques. If you regularly practice mindfulness, you are more able to respond more positively to stressful situations and you create a muscle memory which is able to become your parachute. You don’t want to start trying to do mindfulness practice when you are super stressed, you want to develop it when you are calm so you have more tools to choose from when you are stressed, in order to respond.

Research shows many benefits: being happier, better focus, being able to return to calm more quickly, improved relationships, deal better with strong emotions, be better able to learn, plan, think and remember. Mindfulness is any time, any place for anyone. It’s not a religion, you don’t need to be in a particular place or do particular yoga positions, you don’t need to empty your mind. It is simple, practical techniques you can use. It is not a cure for serious depression. It can help anxiety and stress and generally improve our quality of being.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift and that’s why they call it the present. Mindfulness is all about being present with what it is, without judging it. The question we want to ask ourselves is do we want to be mind-full or mindful?

John Kabat-Zinn has videos you can look at. Tricia wants to run a course for ELT professionals, which she will post more information about it in the ELT Lightbulb moments group in due course. Mindfulness increases the connections between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortext so practising is literally ‘weaving the parachute’ – do it on a daily basis don’t wait til you need it! NB it doesn’t need to be an hour a day, 10 minutes on a regular basis will have a positive effect.

And that was the end of the session. My attendance was serendipitous as I hadn’t realised it was on until a minute before it started when I happened to notice an announcement about it! None of it was new to me but it’s always good to be reminded and I’ll be interested to hear more about the course too. I liked the image of not waiting until you are jumping out of a plane to weave a parachute. I.e. develop mindfulness techniques when things are calm so you can use them when things are not calm.

Somehow or another, another academic year is drawing to a close. I said goodbye to another group of students today (lovely group, they were!) and all that remains is some writing exam standardisation, a pile of exam marking, and some coursework misconduct meetings next week. (Also next week, I will be getting my second dose of vaccine, woohoo!) It seems the appropriate point to reflect on the goals I set at the start of the academic year and look forward to next academic year.

I finished last year in a pretty sorry state in some ways – poor health, feeling burnt out and uncertain about continuing in my role as ADoS. A good long break helped and I came back to work with the following goals:

1. Be curious! By being curious about everything that I encounter, all the newness that is ahead, I can open up lots of opportunities for learning and growth. 
2. Be patient! With myself, with my colleagues, with my students. It won’t be an easy year and that is ok, it can still be a positive one.
3. Be grateful! Look for the positives and appreciate them. Smile lots. 
4. Be open to challenge! It’s ok, good even, for things to be difficult, challenge leads to discovery and growth. 
5. Be kind to myself! Look after myself appropriately, maintain a good work-life balance (easier with the 4-day week!), keep meditating, eat well, exercise regularly, spend quality time with my girlfriend regularly. 

In the end, I decided to continue in the ADoS role and so now have another year of that under my belt. It has been a year fully spent working online/remotely. It has also now been a year and a half since I last worked in our building, which seems extraordinary to say the least! So, how I have done with the goals?

1. I have learned a LOT this academic year. Amongst other things, I have put myself in online class student shoes by participating in Italian language classes once a week. I have done courses with two different providers and continue studying with the second provider. Each provider gave a very different learning experience, both of which I have blogged extensively about. What I have learned by being a student, of course, I have also been able to apply to being a teacher. I think I have become a reasonably competent online teacher, comfortable with this way of teaching. However, there is plenty of room for improvement. Use and monitoring of breakout rooms comes to mind. With a class of 20 students, I struggled with this. Feedback from my students, obtained through group discussions of a list of questions which they summarised their answers to in a Google doc will be useful going forward, as will the feedback from my line manager’s observation. I was lucky, they were a great group and I enjoyed teaching them. Other learning opportunities have included attending online TD workshops, from which I came away with ideas and food for thought, and reading – journal articles, blog posts, books. Finally, due to the high standard of my own application, I have been a fellowship assessor for two application cycles, so when people have submitted applications for becoming Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Authority (AFHEA), FHEA, and Senior FHEA (what I achieved in May last year), I have been one of a large group of people who have assessed those applications. I sat out the most recent round (as a voluntary role, you can elect to sit out for a cycle when you need to and I decided for this one I needed to!) but in the two that I did do this academic year, I learnt more about what my colleagues across the university are doing, which was fascinating. I would say yes, I did open up some good opportunities for learning and growth. May this continue.
2. I think I have been more patient this year and allowed it to be the year that it was. I have tried to meditate more regularly but it has been sporadic. That said, I am nevertheless getting better at pausing rather than reacting, which also helps on the patience front. One of my goals for this holiday is to really get into a proper regular meditating habit as I very much believe it will help me next academic year when things are all change again!
3. My gf and I keep a gratitude calendar together. Every evening before bed, we add in all the things we are grateful for from that day. It’s just a google doc with a table. Some days it is harder than others but on all days we can find stuff. And that in itself is something to be grateful for! (I recommend keeping a gratitude calendar – I kept one alone before my gf and I got together; we only started doing it together during the first lockdown when we were apart, as a way to continue to bond – it is a great way to cultivate a mind that finds the positives and very simple and quick to do. You could use a notebook, a word doc, whatever works for you.)
4. Well, this was rather a vague goal wasn’t it. But here we all are. Could almost argue that by doing my job for this academic year I was by definition open to challenge! I think getting fully to grips with online teaching (last academic year was just one term and we were doing a very limited amount of live stuff) has been a big challenge, in particular how to look after my students, how to make the lessons accessible to them, how to support their learning and assessment effectively. I feel I have come a long way since September 2020 when we kicked off. In terms of ADoSing, it was my partner teacher’s second year of doing it so it has been solid. Good teamwork, pretty smooth. The odd hiccup but dealt with effectively. Next year, I will have a new partner ADoS as the current one is going on maternity leave. I think I have been in the position that much longer than last time I was in this position and hope therefore to be a better mentor – it is certainly something I will be focusing on. I will also hopefully be making SMARTer goals… 😉
5. Ah yes. The first year of 4 day weeks. 🙂 I can say without doubt that it was definitely the right decision for me. I am in a MUCH better state than I was this time last year. While it has been a markedly less stressful academic year than the previous one, in which we were throwing down the train track as we hurtled along it, I am in no doubt that my quality of life has improved significantly with the change from 5 days to 4. The balance is just much, much better. Working from home has continued to be positive, also since I moved in with my gf. Being able to cook and eat lunch together has made eating less monotonous and we manage to do it healthily. Exercise is MUCH easier with a 4 day week because I can do my long runs or bike rides on my not at work day, while she is working, and therefore not be choosing between spending quality time with her and doing substantial exercise. At the weekends we do things like swimming and paddling together and I fit in shorter runs/bike rides sometimes too.

While I was writing this, I just received, in my email inbox, a recognition award:

Not just me, all the ADoSes. Honestly, I reckon the entire centre deserves one. Everyone has put such a lot in since this pandemic started. These awards were put on hold for a while due to financial constraints but it seems they are back again. It is always super nice to be appreciated! Very motivating.

Looking forward to next year, it is going to be a year of great change. After a year of being fully at home and online, it is back to the college for us! Something that is both scary and exciting. However, I am going to treat myself to having my holiday before I think about my goals for next academic year. That will be a job for nearer the time of The Great Return. For now, I will wrap this up and with it academic year 2020-21 (minus the final marking week, of course). Overall, I would say, a definite positive one. Hurrah!

Despite my busy week (I am now officially a Mental Health First Aider!), I am managing to squeeze publishing this post in as my last task for the week! That means I will now be up to date with this series of posts again!

I am first as usual! :-p So punctual, me. And I am here with all my positive attitude. I realised I have mostly focused on challenges/difficulties/negative things (not exclusively though!) so tonight I am going to focus on positive things! Try to challenge the old negativity bias.

….And I am alone…! Phew another student arrived. Until she did, I was chatting with the teaching in Italian, which was nice. ..Aand another. Now we are three and the teacher. And we are talking about the newsletter thingy from last week. Also, I did my homework so I am all prepared for it, whoop. My girlfriend gave me an idea for what to write about!

Qualche settimana fa, c’era c’è stato un incidente di macchina stradale a Woodseats, su una piccola strada nella periferia di Sheffield. Erano Coinvolte erano tre macchine, due delle quale che andavano troppo veloce e una che era parcheggiata accanto al marchepiede marciapiede. Una delle due macchine che andavano troppo veloce era rimasta sottosopra si è ribaltata. Quella che era parcheggiata sosteneva ha subito anche dei danni. Gli autisti non erano feriti ma poi hanno litigato nel bel mezzo della strada. La polizia dovevano ha dovuto chiudere la strada. Uno degli autisti lavora per una pizzeria e sfortunatamente i clienti quella sera non ricevevano non hanno ricevuto le pizze.

• Novità?
• Che mi racconti di bello?

These are ways to ask someone for their news, which is apparently what we are doing here!

I had to share my homework in the chat and like the one at the end of last lesson, we are going through correcting it, with the teacher displaying it on screen. (And I corrected my version above as we did it!)

Hurrah I passed! It satisfied requirements. Phew. It was nice to get all the corrections. I have discovered I need to review when to use imperfect vs perfect tenses. I can find where in the coursebook that is covered and use it to review 🙂 (When I get time, not this week which is crazy busy!)

Now we are talking about news again.

Notizie su – news about

La pagina culturale – culture

Societa – lifestyle

La salute e il benessere – health and wellbeing

We have to do another one for next week, but something like an article that belongs in the above section…I think… Still needing these 5 ‘w’’s but I think maybe it is flexible… I will again invent something anyway. All good. (Haha uploading this blog post has reminded me I still need to do this before Monday evening, haiyaaa!)

And now onto grammar review of the unreal if clauses.

Se Boris Johnson avesse preso delle decisioni adeguati, non avremmo passato un’anno così caotico.

P.86. We have to listen and tick but I don’t have a pencil to do so, so doing it this way instead:

1. C
2. G
3. M
4. C
5. G
6. M
7. C
8. G
9. G
10. M
11. M

This kind of activity is harder than a T/F kind because the statements can’t follow the order of the text so you have to have attention in multiple places. We listened to the first part/person. Then stopped and read the statements we are to tick aloud. Then listen with pauses and teacher repetition. Then went through the answers for the first person. Then we listened to the next one twice through and then went through answers. Then the third one once. I managed reasonably well! This time the teacher had the audio ripped into their computer and was able to play it for us and it worked ok. When I’ve done listening with my students, I’ve had them go away and listen to a link and then come back. I suppose with a small group as we are tonight, there is a lower likelihood of audio and connectivity problems as fewer students to have them. Also we in this class are all UK-based while my students are all over the place with varying quality of connections!

BREAK TIME

Only 2 of us came back after break. Lost the other. <shrug>

p87 A speaking activity based on the listening. We had to use those unreal conditionals to talk about one of the speaker’s life.

Se Monica non avesse smesso di giocare a calcio, non avrebbe studiato all’università. Se non fosse andato all’università, non sarebbe diventata un insegnante e non avrebbe tempo per fare la fotografa.

Next exercise is doing something similar but with our own experiences!

• Se non avessi fatto preso il diploma CELTA, non sarei diventata insegnante di Inglese come lingua straniere.
• Se non avessi preso il diploma DELTA, non sarei andata a Palermo.
• Se non fossi andata a Palermo per insegnare, non avrei imparato l’Italiano.
• Se non avessi provato un sito di incontri, non avrei trovato la mia compagna.

Ooo the one other student who came back after break taught English in Poland for a while! (I learned this via her sentences for the above activity!) We only did 2 of the sentences so no coming out for me after all. :-p

Next, listening to a song. We have to write down the phrases we understand and write down any vocab we don’t know. We should also try to understand the general meaning of the song.

• Io e te by Battisti
• Qualcuno ha scelto forse per noi
• Poi ho incontrato te
• L’esistenza è diventata
• La stagione nuova
• Fra le tue braccia calde
• Io e te
• Stesso io desiderio

I have been told to listen for general meaning this time round.

Con lei non ha paura di morire…?

 It’s quite long and whiny hahaha. Lurrrve song. But I could understand a fair bit til the background music got too loud compared to the voice. I also had to unplug my big monitor to adjust the volume as it was too loud then after teacher’s voice was too soft so more unplugging and replugging. Tech! But I managed. The third time round we listen with the lyrics. Then we look at the lyrics and discuss the meaning. Then we did a memory based gap fill lockstep. Then teacher tried to make us memorise each line.

And, with some more discussion of it, that brings us to the end! Now half way through the course!! And thinking after the end if I can do another online class (if they are still available, not all back to f2f) with another language centre, e.g. IH, it would be interesting to compare!

Reflections

• I quite enjoyed the lesson. Partly because it jumped about less than previously (we stayed in the same general vicinity of the coursebook once we moved onto it; the existence of homework linked us back to the previous lesson for some review as well as going through the homework; we did some grammar review; the listening was connected to the language point. Only the song was random but hey why not!).  Partly because every week I am a little more used to how it goes and what to expect and therefore it is less stressful.  It’s taken me to half way through the course for this to happen. Wonder if it would be quicker in a subsequent course. Something to do with getting used to being a learner again in a formal setting i.e. the (virtual) classroom. It’s also about getting used to having to find the energy on an evening after work – I am less exhausted by half way through the lesson now, though I do appreciate the break half way through – enough time to get a cup of tea and have an eye break.
• I get excited every time I learn some little snippet about my classmates. I want to know more about who they are and what keeps them plugging away at these courses. As in their motivation for learning. Sandy commented on a previous post-lesson blog suggesting I try to give the teacher feedback directly about the lack of groupwork but I don’t feel comfortable to. The other students may be quite happy with the status quo (they are back for another course after all!), I don’t want to rock the boat being the only newcomer.
• It’s interesting that there are two of us who are teachers. Not sure what the other three do. The other teacher is the one who uses English strategies a lot. The only other thing I know about her teaching is that it involved a school trip to Germany a couple of years ago as that featured in the anecdote she did for the first newsletter thingy. I wonder what teaching and learning experience and beliefs she has.
• I’m starting to consider other courses after this one = I am enjoying being a learner again despite all my trials and tribulations with it! In one sense it’s a pity it didn’t occur to me sooner to try (the pandemic has made online learning opportunities proliferate where they didn’t before) but on the other hand I had enough on my plate coping with adjusting to new work conditions, building my new relationship, negotiating health issues and moving house!
• So far I have been first to arrive and first back after the break every lesson and the only one to have attended all five lessons from beginning to end. I hadn’t anticipated this being unusual given it isn’t free! I used to admire my students in Palermo for coming to their evening classes regularly twice a week in the 1930-2050 slot – they had to actually come to the school not just log onto a computer on time. I can just about cope with once a week on a computer in my house! No travel time or effort needed.
• It’s been interesting seeing how the teacher does feedback on oral and written production. How to do feedback effectively is something I think about a lot! Of course what works with a class of 3-4 students isn’t necessarily compatible with a class of 18-20 students! However, using the share screen function to use a word doc with a text and making corrections to it live is certainly something I could try. Though, share screen uses a lot of internet and could create problems for my students with dodgy connections I think. We are advised to avoid it where possible. But I suppose a Google doc that students have the link to could be used in the same way. I will keep it in mind…

Overall, half way through the course, I’m really glad I signed up for it. It’s been so interesting to go through the process of being new to the class, getting used to how it works, working through the barriers created by my expectations and frustrations. I feel really positive about it. Let’s see how the next five weeks go! It’s nice to be blogging regularly again too. I think once this course (and any sucessors I might join) comes to an end, I will try to set aside time each week to self-teach myself again. Continue with Italian? Try Polish again? Try Mandarin again? And blog about it, of course! We shall see. I just love language learning!

<I am running a week behind as last week was especially busy due to the need to prepare for this week where I am only in work two days because of the remaining three one (today) is my not at work day and two are allocated to a Mental Health First Aid Course – starts tomorrow, eek! So there will be two posts this week and then I will be up to date again!>

I am first to arrive again. Insufferable. :-p Then one other student arrived so we could do some talking. But through the teacher, not directly, of course! Bit by bit, students arrive. I feel more relaxed tonight, so I think my reflections after the last lesson have helped me! 🙂 My webcam isn’t working tonight, not sure why. Tech, always tech.

= Some of the vocab that came out of the chat – the question was ‘what are you missing during lockdown?’ – Also vedere gli amici/la famiglia più facilmente

Then we moved on to…

Se aveste 1000 sterline a spendere in modo frivolo, come li spendereste?

Tonight I am experimenting. Using the everyone chat to communicate directly with students. The everyone chat though. Trying to get some kind of rapport with them! I tried with the student who arrived late, in response to the teacher-directed conversation.

Se avessi 1000 sterline, andrei in Sicilia, poi darei il resto in beneficenza.

We are up to our full 5 students including me again. Me and two others with no webcam, the teacher and two others with webcam.

We are going back to the topic of last week. p80. Grammar presentation. The one we opened with 3 mins to spare last week. We are reading it aloud. Haiya… And teacher is explaining, in Italian and then in English.  I guess we are doing ye olde PPP! At least being done in Italian first, I can get some listening practice from it!

Ohhhh, I was thinking it feels like way too much explanation, but then remembered I have the advantage of knowing these structures, on a metaknowledge level, in English, because of being a teacher. 

1. Se Luigi avessi preso la medicina, forse adesso sarebbe guarito.
2. Se il vestito avesse costato meno, forse l’avrei comprato.
3. Forse sarei riuscità ad andare al lavoro ieri se non ci fosse stato uno sciopero degli autobus.
4. Se fossimo stati meno stanchi,  saremmo partiti per il fine settimana.
5. Se fossimo usciti più presto, forse saremmo arrivati in tempo all’appuntamento con il nostro amico.
6. Se l’agenzia di viaggi…

We did the above as read aloud and answer directly, no time to do it ourselves first. I wasn’t asked to answer before I had done them all first. Mini-success for me, making it work for myself. I think the teacher feels the need to be talking to us all the time, not letting us do activities by ourselves or in pairs in between.  Ah ooops, turns out there are more questions so we went through them in order, 1-4, up til me and then suddenly jumped two ahead so I hadn’t done it in advance. (I might have got that far if I’d realised the activity went overleaf so could have continued doing it for myself in advance, oops.) Still, I can complete the exercise in my own time for practise. No problem. Good revision.

Reading, a text. Waaaait. We might be doing a jigsaw of sorts, We have been allocated paragraphs. We must read and make a summary. Omg, I think my feedback landed. Amazing.  I got to read my paragraph and the rest of the text and write my one sentence summary. So nice to have actual time to read silently. And the text was on the page after the grammar exercises and actually relates to them. Hurrah.

L’autore parla dei rimpianti che possiamo avere se ci chiediamo cosa avrebbe potuto succedere se avessimo fatto scelti diverse di quelli che abbiamo fatto.

*cosa sarebbe potuto succedere

*scelte diverse

*da quelle

We each did our summary of our little paragraph and then…

BREAK!

Now we are jumping back 30odd pages, p54

Whyyyyy. Oh well. Here we are.

Studentesse rubano profumi per regalarli ai loro fidanzati = a title. Then there are some words in a bubble.  Ci sono vari elementi.

Era poco prima di San Valentino. Tre studentesse  sono andate in supermercato. “Pensavamo di comprare qualcosa per dare ai nostri fidanzati ma poi abbiamo visto quanto costavano e non potevamo permettercele” hanno spiegato più tardi quando erano arrivati i Carabinieri di Monteverde dopo la sicurezza li aveva visti che rubavano alcune confezioni di profumi invece di pagarli.

Quite happy with my effort!

Then the teacher started on about chi (who), dove (where), cosa (what), quando (when), perché (why) and that these 5 things are in every newspaper article.

NB still not a clue how, or if, this links to the first half of the lesson!

La cronaca – local news. In it: Moda, sport, pettegolezzo, cibo, viaggi, tecnologia. Tanti argomenti che si referiscano alla propria vita.

I chose food. Teacher suggested I write something about healthy food. For a weekly class newspaper.  But I am confused because a food column isn’t really a wwwww thing. So I wrote in the chat in Italian to ask, then audio and teacher replied in English, doh. Said I could change theme then.  I literally have no idea what to write about. Teacher is keen to put it in an Apple pages template we were shown. 

Ok we are supposed to do it now. I think I now gather that this is not going to  be a weekly thing as in doing it every week, just a way of describing the output for tonight.

Interesting: I am using the chatbox more tonight because my webcam isn’t working. But in general anyway I like writing and putting it in the chatbox ok (except tonight when I really don’t know what to write!), but another student in the class is quite resistant to it and prefers speaking. Ooo according to her anecdote she is a teacher. See if we had ever had an opportunity to converse, I might know that already, I’d like to ask her about it.  I did put a question, in Italian of course, in the chatbox, asking what she teaches, but she is busy trying to deal with the task, which is fair enough. Bad timing! My chatbox experiments are falling flat on the communication with other students front.

Still don’t know what to write. I don’t have a picture in my head of what the finished product is quite supposed to be like. I totally understood the first activity with the prompts. But I am confused as to the content of this one. It’s supposed to be about me? But nothing happens to me, especially now. And it doesn’t fit the genre of newspaper. Am I supposed to make it sound like a newspaper article but it’s something banal? One student told an anecdote from two years ago about a pickpocket. How does an anecdote from two years ago fit with newspapers or food writing? Having discarded that theme, what theme should I do and how to connect that? One wrote a few sentences about what gossip is and illustrates which was a different genre again. I…(shrug). But teacher is more fixated on this Apple pages template thingy and in goes the anecdote, which the teacher is now going through and correcting with the student who wrote it.  Am hoping that we will run out of time to get to me. But two students left at break time so there is less cushioning time-wise in that sense.

WE HAVE HOMEWORK! The above. Ok, I will write something. Maybe I will just invent something. I tried to explain my problem. The mismatch between an anecdote and a newspaper and not understanding what it is I am supposed to write, I said I’d like to see an example of what I am aiming for, but it fell on deaf ears. The teacher got quite defensive. Even though I tried to explain I want to do it I just don’t understand what to produce.  

Interesting night!

Homework

1. Se Luigi avessi preso la medicina, forse adesso sarebbe guarito.
2. Se il vestito avesse costato meno, forse l’avrei comprato.
3. Forse sarei riuscità ad andare al lavoro ieri se non ci fosse stato uno sciopero degli autobus.
4. Se fossimo stati meno stanchi,  saremmo partiti per il fine settimana.
5. Se fossimo usciti più presto, forse saremmo arrivati in tempo all’appuntamento con il nostro amico.
6. Se l’agenzia di viaggi fosse stata sempre aperta, sarebbero potuto comprare il biglietto.
7. Se fossero arrivati in tempo, non avranno perso il treno.
8. Se non avessi mangiato troppo, non avresti avuto un indigestione.
9. Se non avessi passato troppo tempo al computer ieri sera, non avrei avuto mal di testa.
10. Se fossimo rientrati più presto, avremmo potuto vedere un bel documentario in tv.

Qualche settimana fa, c’era un incidente di macchina a Woodseats, su una piccola strada nella periferia di Sheffield. Coinvolte erano tre macchine, due che andavano troppo veloce e una che era parcheggiata accanto al marchepiede, e una delle due che andavano troppo veloce era rimasta sottosopra. Quella che era parcheggiata sosteneva anche dei danni. Gli autisti non erano feriti ma poi hanno litigato nel bel mezzo della strada. La polizia dovevano chiudere la strada. Uno degli autisi lavora per una pizzeria e sfortunatamente i clienti quella sera non ricevevano le pizze.

Reflections

• It is weird when the first half of the lesson before break and the second half after the break have absolutely no discernible connection. Would have been nice to do some speaking or writing that were connected to the text we read, which itself connected to the grammar we had done. Or at least either at the end of the first half or start of the second half some kind of transitional element between the two.  I seem to spend a lot of time wondering where we are going and how where we are relates to where we have been. So though I began the lesson feeling more relaxed, it was a bit stressful at times. But not as stressful as it would have been if I hadn’t been more relaxed to start with! So I still feel that I am making progress in (coping with) being a learner again! 🙂

• We are now 4 lessons in to the course, nearly 50%, and there hasn’t been any opportunity for speaking directly to classmates even though we are upper intermediate and capable of conversing even if we make a bunch of mistakes. Nearly half way through the course and I barely know who they are.

• It is really hard when, with the best will in the world, you don’t understand the task you have to do. Especially if that is then taken as being obstructive. Relatedly, models are worth a thousand instructions. If I could have seen a model, I would have been able to figure out the task requirement. Not understanding made me feel frustrated and sad. I wasn’t being deliberately obtuse. Would have been handy to be able to ask classmates quietly, as one could in a regular classroom!

• It was exciting to have homework even though I didn’t understand it very well. I also made my own homework by finishing the activity we started in class. And it was also good to have time to read silently before doing things with the text. Hopefully this won’t be a one-off!

• My couple of attempts to use the everyone chat box to communicate directly with other learners kinda failed. But at least I experimented! It might be because who I addressed is the same one who doesn’t like writing because it is too time-consuming.

• Having background grammar knowledge is useful. More difficult if L1 doesn’t have equivalents or you don’t have explicit meta-knowledge of the L1 equivalents.

I am here with a minute to spare. Phew. Ooooo Ghost Student (the silent “X’s Ipad) from the last two lessons now has a face (and a new internet connection – apparently that was the issue), yay!

Omg we’re back to the fridges! But just a short review, this time, phew.

Oooo there’s a new student, but connecting connecting…

p75 Se le strade del mio quartiere potessero parlare (parlassero), chiederanno chiederebbero dove sono tutti gli abitanti.

I had to complete above phrase, from course book but then we have switched to chatting, with the new student (she managed to connect in the end! – new to me but not new to the courses). New student is really good at having a go and not worrying about making mistakes, seeking missing language etc, though speaking in English a lot around the Italian. Is interesting, the use of various strategies but so much in English.

Ooo back to my sentence. Oh except now being asked again which one I want to do. I had thought I was being asked for my sentence because we went through the which do you want to do ok now do it before. Oh well. Everyone has now got a sentence to complete.

My feedback may have been listened to – we were told the purpose of this activity: to review the grammar structure. At the same time, we are talking about a listening activity but some of us don’t have the cd (others) or haven’t got it on the computer (me). The chopping and changing is a bit confusing.

Back to the sentences, teacher has now changed the stem a bit, hence the bit in brackets. Oooo there are now four of us students. I wonder if pair-work will be a thing tonight?

My turn for the sentence: p75 Se le strade del mio quartiere potessero parlare (parlassero), chiederanno chiederebbero dove sono tutti gli abitanti.

I made a mistake with the conjugation – I am tired! I guess we all are.

Now p65 – for the listening activity (jumping around in the course book big time!)

No time to read the questions, then a leetle bit of time cos tech issues. But not enough!

1.a 2 falso (vero – in parte, stupid question) 3 falso 4. vero 5. vero 6 un litigio…/ una tempesta 7. falso 8. falso 9. alla rubrica delle lettere 10. vero 11. falso

We listened once in entirety then went through bit by bit. The audio quality was poor.  The teacher repeated the audio slowly and then elicited answers from us (also making us read aloud the question first, of course!). No pair checking stages or anything.  

It’s also difficult when teacher connection struggles and words get lost. Or is it my connection creating this… connections, ay. Perennial problem.

…break time? Hopefully soon, is the time. I need it! Ahhh after we have finished this feedback. Yayyy.

BREAK

Everyone came back after break – there’s a first time for everything!

The teacher did a screen share, my screen then went funny format-wise (went tiny, couldn’t see them etc), I was on mute but didn’t realise, all a bit of a mess but eventually sorted it.  Gotta love tech. We are looking at images which apparently have something to do with some reading we will do. Hopefully not aloud. No idea where in the course book or the overall topic…! Trying to see poor quality pics and understand what is happening is hard, turns out…

p.84 (!) Oh we’re reading aloud. Joy. Guess my feedback fell on deaf ears. Teacher started to tell us to read it ourselves but then stopped and reverted to read aloud. I made everyone wait very briefly so I could read my bits quietly first, so I could chunk it all properly – that worked better. Then I read the whole text properly while teacher did the ‘underline the words you don’t know’ and my classmates took turns asking their words. Given the chance to read, I didn’t need to ask about any words. I had no understanding of the text until I could read it through quietly myself though. Only my bits in isolation, not the meaning of the whole.

We then had to put the pictures in order according to the story. Except we can’t see them all, so we have to have the memory of all them and which are and aren’t already used. And the teacher is scrolling up and down randomly which hurts my eyes. Haiya.

We are asked who wants to retell the story using the pictures (that are still being repeatedly scrolled…). I didn’t volunteer.  This could have been a good activity in pairs having sent us a pdf with the pics on it. Both the ordering and telling. The pairs/groups feedback also fell on deaf ears I guess. In the coursebook, this and another text were a paired information gap activity, but not for us. We just looked at the one text as described. I had to contribute anyway, to this retelling, and managed to without any trouble. (See, I did understand the text when given the chance to actually read it…)

5 minutes before the end of the lesson, the teacher started explaining the (different from the one we have already looked at which came later in the course book) congiuntivo structure in the text (there was one example). Haiya…

p.81 with 3 mins to go… we look at an activity  about this new grammar point and then the teacher does the first one for us and that brings the lesson to an end with a “we’ll continue this next time” – which I can try to use as a springboard for preparation!

What I learnt about being a student in this session:

• Jumping around in the coursebook is confusing. This doesn’t mean I think it should be followed to the letter, but at least the general direction for new learning should be forwards through the units (within each of which, of course, you might add, add to, remove from, remove etc activities depending on the type of lesson and students). It’s been a while since I have taught using a coursebook though – in my current context, we have set materials for each lesson (powerpoints, student handouts where relevant). I edit them to suit my class but that is generally in terms of how I think best to reach the goals of the week across the 3 lessons I have with students. This term I am reteaching Term 1 to a new cohort so last term I made a lot more changes, this term it’s more tweaks based on the students being different and what did/didn’t work last time. I think, on reflection, having been an EAP teacher for a good number of years now, I am used to EAP-style teaching and learning, which is quite different from general language teaching and learning. So being a student in a general language classroom is another level of very different experience, than just being in student shoes full-stop is. This is helpful to realise though. From my point of view as a student, I realise I need to relax my expectations as to what I will get out of the course learning Italian-wise and accept that’s it’s just a once a week general language evening class and there won’t be the structure to things that I am used to in my context. I came into it wanting to get as much as I can out of it, maybe I need to be more realistic about what that is. E.g. the opportunity to speak was a big one but given pair and group work aren’t a thing, there’s more limit on how much – I need to work with that, figure out how to maximise what there is. But also, from my own students’ point of view that this is how they might feel as they adjust from their previous systems of learning to the college’s system of learning. So this is now another way I can empathise with my students.

• Jumping around in the coursebook being a thing means it is impossible to prepare for lessons in advance unless information about the following lesson is given in advance. Of course I am referring to my plan to read ahead to make the reading aloud thing less of an issue for me. I didn’t actually get round to it in advance of this lesson (partly  I suppose because I was hoping my feedback would lead to there being time to read silently before reading aloud! As, I had an email saying the feedback had been anonymously passed on to the instructor and would be acted on…) but if I had, it would have been fruitless anyway.  I would have had to have read about 10 pages of coursebook, including well into the next unit. For the listening, another 10+ pages in the other direction. I think next lesson, if we have to read aloud without time to read silently first, I will raise my hand and ask for a couple of minutes! Try the direct approach to problem solving.

• It takes time to read and understand listening questions. Because they are out of context, you need to read the question, process the language and deal with the decontextualised nature of it all. Particularly when questions are quite random! And if you don’t have time to do that before you start listening, you get woefully left behind, trying to read questions and listen to the recording at the same time. Ohhhh, we didn’t do any lead in to the listening topic.  I think a bit of a lead-in and some time to read the questions before listening would have helped a lot. A pair work stage after the first listening would have been good too, to share what we understood so far before listening again. I think because we are a small group, the teacher doesn’t think breakout rooms are necessary, maybe. But I think they could still be put to good use.

• It’s frustrating to be asked to give feedback, to put effort into making it constructive (rather than just complain without explanation or suggestion or just say all is fine) and for it all to be ignored even though it would be easy to implement. I suppose the centre is collecting feedback rather than the tutor. (The original information about the course email said there will be questionnaires sent out regularly to get feedback to improve the courses etc so I guess I will be asked again. We shall see!) Where I work, feedback is also solicited at centre-level, but I do my own Google forms as well. I’m assuming there is no test for us to take at the end of the course, though I guess there might be and I just don’t know it yet! There shouldn’t therefore be tension in terms of what needs to be covered in a given time period (this supposition is also based on how long we spend on some activities and the repetition of the activity from the first lesson which didn’t go exactly to plan etc.). Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t know where we are headed or how we are planning to get there or how we will know when we have arrived. Actually I remember in the first class of the course, it didn’t feel like a first class because I was the only new student and it seemed like a continuation of something else rather than a beginning. I’m assuming we aren’t intending to get all through the course book given we only have 10 lessons and it is a substantial book. Half of it maybe? I remember that is how it was when I taught in Italy. Half a book per course. Clearer information around this would be useful, not least to inform expectations!

• If you want students to look at pictures and do things like order them and use them to tell a story, make a one page pdf that they all fit on to and share that with the students to refer to during those activities. This would save eye strain from the repeated scrolling up and down thing and free up brain space that would no longer be taken up by trying to remember which pictures have been used and which still remain and what are they again. Handouts can still be a thing in the virtual classroom?

• I think the teacher can over-rely on students’ L1 to explain things. I don’t speak enough Mandarin or Arabic for that to be an issue for me with my students (majority of them are from those linguistic backgrounds) but when I was in Italy and had learned some Italian, I didn’t keep speaking to the students in Italian. It would be the odd incidental word where translation would be easier than explanation, not instructions and explanations of instructions etc. I think encouragement to speak the target language combined with patience when understanding or communicating falters would be better. I wonder if that student using all the communication strategies in English would be able to use those strategies in Italian if that – classroom language/language for clarification/circumlocution etc in the target language – had been encouraged to develop (by Upper Intermediate, there is no reason why that shouldn’t be possible) rather than reliance on L1 still being a thing.

• It’s hard to feel comfortable with classmates who you don’t have the opportunity to speak directly with. There was very little in the way of getting to know you in Lesson 1 and no incidental chat can happen if you are never in pairs or groups with any of them. It’s a bit of a shame really, in that if I am not getting to know my classmates or working directly with them, I might as well be in a 1-1 lesson or teaching myself. Until now, they are mostly just people who happen to be in the virtual classroom with me. I don’t know their motivation for doing the class, I don’t know what they do outside the class, I don’t know how they feel about the activities we are doing and so on and so on. I think virtual classrooms are tricky. Unless you use breakout rooms, it’s like the teacher is standing on top of you the whole time and the focus is on the teacher so there is no room for target language phatic communication. In a real classroom you can be less conspicuous but if you are all in the main room, whatever the size of the group, it is as though in a real classroom the teacher is sitting at the table with you or standing right by it (and in this case leading the discussion/task/whatever it is at the time). As teachers, we learn how to use body language and position in the classroom to achieve various things; I guess we have to relearn how to do that in a virtual environment effectively too.

• Being a student really is a great way to challenge and explore one’s beliefs about teaching and learning!