uni

Deadlines and Evaluations.

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Wednesday 19thDecember, 2018.
This was our first (and dreaded) deadline day for assignment hand-ins at university, despite our course starting almost 3 months before.

For this, we had to plan, execute and evaluate a MicroTeach (MT), and also do an observation of an experienced tutorand reflect on what we learnt, pinpointing some of the teaching methods used.

As far as assignments go, I actually really enjoyed these two! Planning the MicroTeach was something different and a bit of a challenge, but one that I would happily do again. It was nice we were given so much freedom of what to teach within the 30 minute class. We were literally told we could do whatever we wanted, as long as we kept it respectful and achievable within the time limit, and without needing a crazy amount of resources! I think this is why so many people struggled with deciding on a topic. With so much freedom, where do you start? Similar to why lots are finding it difficult to write these reflective blogs. In education we’re told from so young exactly what to do, what to write, and how to do it. Yet now, here we are, being given almost unlimited possibilities and freedom to teach whatever we want (for the MT), and blog however we find easiest about our education or teaching. It’s a difficult thing to allow yourself to be free in education when we’ve been given so many constraints in the past.

Choosing my topic for the MT was quite easy; I wanted to teach a skill that not many others have. A lot were going to teach an introduction to a different language, but I wanted to make mine a little different, focusing on counting from 1-10 in Mandarin, including the hand gestures. I love coming up with ideas and activities to Continue reading →

The 3 P’s: Procrastination, Placement and PPTs

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I planned on writing this blog about 2 weeks ago. I’ll be honest, in my head, I was going to be writing a short blog entry once a week. That’s obviously not happened, and part of the reasoning for that is my incredible procrastination skills.

Each week I feel like I’m not working to my full potential. I’m not making the best use of my time. And I’m definitely not getting enough productive work done. In theory, I’ve been pretty well organised and have an ideal amount of time during the week to get my uni work and reading done, prepare for my ESOL sessions, and everything else that goes with daily life. I’m in uni “all day” Monday & Friday, and I only work from 6pm onwards Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Weekends are a write off, I’m either off gallivanting (most recent was a concert and Christmas Markets in Manchester, and next week we’re off to stay in a Gypsy Caravan), or I’m working alllll weekend. And I mean all weekend.

I ended up finding and watching a TED talk the other day, all about procrastination. It was really interesting, totally relatable, and a seriously great way to put off doing any work for 15 more minutes. Give it a watch and see if you relate to the panic monster, or the instant gratification monkey. That poor rational decision maker doesn’t get a look in as often as it should!

Panic Monster - Procrastination

Ok, now I’ve finished procrastinating by looking at the topic of procrastination, let’s get onto some proper blog writing…

My original idea for this blog post was reflecting on my 3rd and 4th Session with my ESOL in the Community group. For the 3rd session, there was only 1 learner able to attend. This actually worked out really well for the individual learner (let’s call her L.1). L.1 has the lowest English ability of our little group, so she really benefitted from being taught 1-on-1 as I was able to slow down the session to her pace, going over some simple grammar points and vocab words which perhaps the other learners would have sailed through. Continue reading →

From China to the Chinese

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Imagine my delight when I was told one of our assignments for uni is to write a minimum of 3 reflective blogs.
FINALLY!
I’ve been given an excuse to tap away at the keys again and upload more of my rambling thoughts and feelings onto my dusty old blog.

This blog has gone from a personal venting space (a ‘let me try and sort my life/mind out’sort of thing), to somewhere for me to pass the time while I was bored sat at my desk in work, and then it became a place for me to tell the tales (and brag about) my travels around South East Asia. Well, hold onto the handlebars kids, this rollercoaster of a blog is about to take another wild turn… It’s about to become my “Academic, reflective blog”… It won’t be as interesting or as exciting as me telling you about (prepare for some more casual bragging here) that one time I rented a scooter and rode the Hai Van Pass in Vietnam, or the time I went to a questionably named festival under the Hong Kong skyline (Clockenflap, I’m talking about you)…

 

Hai Van Pass, Vietnam
Clockenflap, HongKong

But, it is nice to have something that will have adapted with me and travelled through my ups and downs and twirly-whirly path of life I’ve found myself on, at the ripe old age of 25.

Anyways, I’ll quit rambling now, that’s definitely something I’m going to have to try and get better at for these posts!

Here we go, my first academic, reflective blog… enjoy!

Let me start with a genuine conversation I had with my mum and my sister:

Me: “I’m freaking out a bit! I mean, I’m going to be an actual teacher, like, I’m going to have to teach people things!” 
Mum: “Why are you freaking out, you’ve done this…”
Me: “What? No I haven’t, I’ve got no experience of being a teacher, how am I supposed to handle this year?!”

Sister: “Charlie, what do you think you’ve been doing for the past year and a half…? You’ve been working at a school, TEACHING English to Chinese kids… you’re already a teacher.”
Me: “Oh… right. I mean, that didn’t count. Wait, did that count? Damn… I never thought of that.”

 For my whole life, I’ve grown up saying “I’ll never be a teacher, can’t think of anything worse!”. This is basically just because I’ve seen the Continue reading →