DAY ONE: On rabbits, clocks and places to get

It took me twelve hours to get here, but I did it. :) I’m writing this from a six bedroom dorm house at the University of Kent. The trip from Stansted to Canterbury was stressful – nothing prepared me for that many misunderstandings and lack of helpfulness. But two things really struck me:

1.It was the Europeans who undoubtedly introduced the signalling system into the underground at Beijing and Shanghai, but yesterday the Tube was more difficult to navigate than the aforementioned…

2.I’ll never forget the first sight of departure boards at the Beijing West Train Station, but in the end we read them by comparing the numbers and departure times to the ones on our tickets. My ticket yesterday had no departure time, and there was no Canterbury on any of the boards, not to mention the woman at the ticket booth told me the train was leaving 20 minutes past real departure time…

But enough of travel troubles, I’m a student again and it’s wonderful. I’ve got 5 roommates and 8 classmates. My trainer is great – her name is Marie and I feel like I’ll learn a lot from her. Our day started with a plenary on intercultural communication and we learnt a golden rule:

IF YOU GET IRRITATED BY WHAT SOMEONE FROM ANOTHER CULTURE DOES OR SAYS THE CHANCES ARE THAT SOMEONE OF YOU HAS MISUNDERSTOOD SOMETHING. 

Throughout the lecture I wondered if that could be applied to my trip… The lecturer, James Banner, also mentioned the differences in viewing time: there are people who do need to be on time and have little tolerance for tardiness and then there are people who see time in a more relaxed way – understanding that watches are guides not overseers of punctuality… Then I wondered if the lady at Victoria sat at this lecture two weeks earlier… ;) 

There’s one last thing I need to mention on the matter of time – There are rabbits on campus. They’re not white, but they’re cute, worried and always in a hurry. 

Maybe I’m close to my Wonderland. 

All my love, Do

Attach This!

Here is a Prezi I made on the topic of the Attachment Theory - the Theory part of my training is going to be based on:

Attachment theory on Prezi

I hope you enjoy it,
All my love,
Dora

A thing of design

I've introduced some changes into the blog - it's a bit richer in content now and the plan is to add more things. In the mean time here is a short introduction into the changes:

• The subtitle of the blog is different. 
• Under the subtitle there is a bar with a link to the homepage of the blog and an “About me” page which contains some basic info about me and my interests. It’ll probably change over time….
• There are two gadget columns now, each on the side of the posts.
• On the right-hand side there are (top to bottom):
• A list of recommended readings – each item on the list is a link: the first two are links to book descriptions, the last one is the book itself (courtesy of Google Books)
• A cloud with labels, i.e. topics I’m writing about.
• A list of links which have saved this teacher a million times by now
• On the left-hand side there is a list of people following my blog through Google services and a box in which you can type in your email address if you’d like to follow me by email. Also, there's the blog archive.

That's all for now.

All my love,

D

The Aims

So what is it that I want to achieve by going to Canterbury? If you've read my last post and tried to answer the question ending it, you might have some ideas on how I had written that part of my applications. What follows is a somewhat edited version of the text in my application - an attempt to make it more interesting and relevant to the audience of this blog:

The classes I teach are multilevel and invariably include students affected by family crises or conditions which affect their ability to concentrate, participate, interact and, finally, learn. It is not a rare occurrence that the behaviour of such a child disrupts the work of the whole class, which either leads to the isolation of the child by his or hers classmates or a situation which is not favourable to learning. As a teacher of a foreign language my task is to improve students' competence in communication, which means the lessons I teach are interactive. As the moderator of interaction I need to be a skilled communicator, especially with disruptive students, and know how to meet their needs in order to steer their energy towards learning and away from disruption - if I do not understand the underlying reasons for a student's behaviour, it is impossible for me to do my job well. I have also encountered a noticeable amount of violence and an equally striking lack of empathy among the schoolchildren I have taught so far. As a teacher I need tools to tap into the sources of empathy in order to prevent violence to the best of my ability in order to make the schools I work in and, ultimately, the society I am a part of more amiable. My third role consists of tailoring learning materials to students’ needs, which brings me back to identifying students’ needs.

I have extensive knowledge of teaching English to speakers of other languages methodology theory as well as linguistics relevant to it, however I only possess basic theoretical and some practical insight into what ADHD, autism, bullying, mental illness and family trauma can do to a child's ability to learn. That makes me a skilled professional in the field of teaching English to an average learner, but leaves me wanting with respect to learners with all sorts of special needs. The course I have applied for covers themes such as effects of trauma, domestic violence, abuse, neglect, etc. on learning, overcoming learning blocks, and also offers fresh ideas on how to asses children and gives ready-made classroom activities which can help with dealing with conflict and behaviour management. University education, internship, cooperation with school counsellors and all of the workshops and lectures I have so far attended have helped me to make do in reaching difficult learners, but none have offered such an extensive insight into the topic and as such, I believe this course will make me a more confident and knowledgeable teacher and my students happier learners.

Hopefully I haven’t bored you by now. The whole point of me publishing the two paragraphs is making clear what I want to achieve by going to Pilgrims and writing this blog. In my application I promised to disseminate the results of my training online. I did so for three reasons:

• …what I learn becomes visible to others and the communication with the inhabitants of the blogosphere always enriches the learning experience,

• I like writing a blog because it usually results in me learning far more than I imagined I would…

• …and I’m rarely able to make myself write one, unless I create a situation in which I MUST write it for whatever reason.

So this is my homework, for the next three weeks at least…

Hopefully I won’t be the only person finding it useful. ;)

All my love,

D

From Comenius to Canterbury

In January this year I applied for Comenius Lifelong Learning funding for a course called Dealing with difficult learners provided by Pilgrims Teacher Training.
In April two of my very dear co-workers and I sat in front of a monitor fingers crossed, and then cheered and hugged happily when the results came in - I got the money. :) When I applied everyone said I would surely get it, not necessarily because of my ability to write or the ideas I had to share. The argument was: "Everyone gets it." But that's not true - the money is limited and people are getting better and better at writing their applications. I didn't find it difficult because I really wanted to go and the course I applied for is something very close to my heart, but I'll confess it took me a couple of days and a number of hours of just thinking through what I should say.
For those who have never applied for a Comenius funding here is a short overview of what I had to do. Other than pure form filling I had to cover 5 themes in writing:

·         PREPARATION – How will I prepare? Do I know the language of the course?

·         AIMS OF THE APPLICANT – What is my job? How does the course match my training needs?

·         IMPACT – on my personal and professional competences, language, intercultural benefits, the institution(s) I work at and my students

·         EUROPEAN ADDED VALUE – Why do I have to leave Croatia in order to gain the knowledge provided by the course? How will my attending the course bring my institution(s) closer to the EU?

·         DISSEMINATION – a plan on how I intend to spread the ideas and notions I learn about to my colleagues (not only at my school, but also at my town and even wider if possible)

The trick to answer all of these questions well is to think through what is it that you want to achieve by going to the course of your choice and how your attendance will benefit the context of your workplace. Bottom line is – You should see yourself as a means to benefit your school, your students and your colleagues, not just think of how well this will look on your resume (even though, it does look very fancy;) ).
So now a task for you.
This is the course I’m going to attend - http://www.pilgrims.co.uk/_files/users/6/8FAF9A459260D8CF4BB0CBC901043EBC.pdf
How could it benefit you? How could it make your life and your students’ lives easier?
I’ll offer my ideas in the next post.
All my love,
D

P.S
As I'm indecisive about where to blog, I'll also be blogging about my Canterbury adventure here:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/dxplorer