Off2Class and Reflections on Blogging

15/4/2015

My grandmother's diary entry on the day of my birth: Friday 17th July.

Here I am – yet another teacher embarking on the blogging adventure! I had never considered blogging myself until very recently. I actually love writing and had started writing a book about my tragi-comic globetrotting experiences but never quite finished it and never found anyone to publish it. So it remained something for friends and family.

Apart from participating in a couple of writing competitions and keeping my travel diaries (something I love having but found a real chore doing), I never strived towards anything more literary than perhaps translating novels. I have never kept a ‘real’ diary because I couldn’t put my heart on paper with the knowledge that someone, some day, might discover it and read my innermost feelings.

I also never wanted a fixed commitment like a regular diary and was all the more surprised to discover – the day I flew to London to organise my grandmother’s funeral, that she had kept tiny diaries all her life – just a few telegraphic lines – but written every single day of her life – at least, once she had moved to Great Britain. Forty years of diaries – day after day! I spent the next few weeks reading them and it was a real pleasure to discover her joys and woes! I also really appreciated having learnt German because that is the language she had written them in.

G.s.D. (Gott sei Dank)

My grandmother would have been a great texter! Her diaries were full of abbreviations it took me very little to figure out but through them I discovered how differently things are perceived over time. Whenever she wrote about a family member going to hospital, she would use the expression ‘G.s.D.’ (Gott sei Dank) – thank goodness or thanks to God they had returned home again. It made me realise that the hospital – which I had always considered a place of healing and therefore a positive place to get better in – she (and probably all those of her generation) had considered it a place of dying. In the mind of the generations born before the First World War, those who went to hospital were lucky to return home again.

So the idea of a blog, a regular commitment, which would be another stress factor in my already very busy life, was definitely not for me. However, I have gleaned so much pleasure reading other teacher’s blogs and enriched my teaching to an extent I would never have imagined, that it is time for me to join in, hoping to be able to make some contributions to the teaching world.

It was also high time I set up a website and got online with my lessons – in order to carry on teaching even when I’m on the go. Last, but not least, I wanted to create an opportunity for my son (and subsequently my daughter) to share their language skills in conversation doing YOUNG PILOT’S ESL CONVERSATION with teenagers by a teenager - An endeavour to finance his dream of becoming a pilot by inspiring youngsters through peer-based conversation on topics of common interest.

Hoping not to have bored you up until now, I would like to direct you to an exciting new teaching platform for busy private teachers which has just ended its beta phase, has ready-to-use professional looking lessons loaded on it suitable for both online and offline private lessons (one-on-one or small groups) offering a high quality learning experience with grammar, vocabulary, spelling and speaking as well as a set of Teacher Notes and ready-to-assign homework for each lesson to reduce preparation time. They are constantly updating the site with new content and give immediate feedback for support.

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