Remember an old film called Sleepless in Seattle? It’s almost 20 years old and it has nothing to do with our course, except for the title that enabled this word game. Because sleepless is how I feel: these two weeks will be hell as all my classes are having tests and I feel drowned in paper. Seven classes to correct and mark plus our tasks here – sorry if I don’t give you all the attention you deserve, but I’ve been sleeping much less than I need to keep my creativity up where it should be.
Besides, as I said before, I am restless until most of the work is done. I was also a bit worried about defining my students’ needs. There are so many things I’d like to do, so many problems to tackle, decisions to make… It was hard for me to start writing about it but as I was doing so, my mind sort of cleared and I was able to realize what my priorities should be. If we want to keep it “elegantly simple” as Robert very well put it, we cannot try to do everything at the same time. There are hundreds of tools out there to be used but, as much as we may like many of them, the secret ingredient for this project will be our ability to choose the most appropriate one(s) to reach our objective. I know now it will be impossible to solve all the problems, but I will have to start somewhere and then move on, continuously, planning, adapting, rearranging, learning, teaching.
Dear Luisa,
ReplyDeleteAre you a mind reader or have you been teleporting here somewhere, Your beautiful words could have come out of my keyboard, as well. I'm also in the middle of exams, but only 5 groups but still. Sometimes (like this time) I try to find as many multichoice tasks as possible as they are quite fast to check and mark. But I have to admit they don't tell us the whole truth of the student's language skills, you can always guess the option and if you're lucky... One part of the exam is listening comprehension and usually the students have to answer open questions as well as multiply ones. If/whena test includes vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening comprehension as well as writing an essay (150-250 words) the papers are not marked in a minute. So I certainly agree with you on the point that we have to prioritize our duties.
Have nice day, here in Harjavalta it's -24 degrees C
Keeping warm,
Sinikka
I think it's happening to most of us. The next week will be even worst for me, but let's forget it for a while and enjoy the rest of the weekend.
DeleteHi Luísa- I love the movie and I love your post. As you probably know, Seattle is pretty close to Oregon, and it is a beautiful city. And sleepless describes the feelings many of us are having these days, including myself. When it rains, it pours, is the old saying, and in Seattle and Oregon it is raining a lot these days. The wonderful thing about being in this class with other teachers is that you do get a good amount of understanding : )
ReplyDelete-Robert
We sure need some understanding, Robert. There is so much more I could be doing in this course, so much more the course and the assignments deserve, but my day only has 24 hours and I'm already using most of them. Sleepless, as I said.
ReplyDelete