London calling!

I had a great time in Canterbury and discovered that I simply love teaching! I taught most days for a whole month and wanted to carry on as it was going so well. It was a challenge teaching summer school as it is an ever changing feast. I would start the week with 15 students and each day some would be taken away and new ones added in an attempt to get the balance right. Apparently this is the norm with continuous enrollment and it was good to see how I coped with it. It was a bit of a lifesaver with my first class as it was literally made up of mainly 14-year-old Italian boys who were on a mission to outdo each other. One in particular was incredibly annoying with his obsession with "Turkish kebab" which was the answer to any and every question I threw at him.

Summer school was a great opportunity to try out lots of activities and teaching games that I had not done before and it is great to have come away with lots of ready made lesson plans that can be easily adapted in the future. The school I taught for provided course books which made life easier but the material often needed to be enriched with my own ideas and I really enjoyed this part of the teaching. The classrooms were well equipped from an IT point of view and I made good use of the video projector. We were discouraged from using photocopies and so I made it my policy to get students doing their own materials as much as possible. Sometimes this meant writing but often it meant producing drawings that could be exploited in speaking activities. I soon generated a lot of material that ended up on the classroom walls.

A highlight was the day that I doubled up with another class and we showed the film Kung Fu Panda with a great follow up activity where the learners created their own animal action characters and film plot which they had to pitch. Very amusing and a great way of activating their language. I will never forget "polar beers".

So now I am back in London and looking for more teaching work as I have decided to stay here for a while. I am working on some writing projects at the moment and need to be in London for a while but then I will be heading abroad again. Hmm where will I go?

Blocked?

Have you ever done any life coaching? Had the conversation that goes something like, "well, I don't know what to do. I feel stuck. Blocked really. I can't move on for some reason. Help!" This is a very familiar conversation I have on a regular basis either with myself or with some of the amazing people who have tried, and often succeeded, to help me. This summer it has been particularly hard to get out of the block or the holding point as Becky Walsh, my intuitive guide, reminds me. "What is a block after all but a holding point as we wait for information to come in to take us forward."

I know I am not in the right place and I also know I have to be here for a while longer. Intuition is a powerful tool that we often ignore at our peril. I am trusting mine a lot more and it tells me to hang in there. So what does this have to do with my blog? Well it has also been blocked and needed a refocus so here it is in its new format. As I shape my life as a teacher and writer, I will be using my blog to keep the conversations going - and try and get them out of my head! I will also use it to explore my EFL and ESOL career and as a place to publish some of my creative writing. It feels good to be back.