Today I woke up at 5:30 in the morning feeling so much peace, because I wasn't in a hurry to get up to prepare or do anything, it was a feeling of complete freedom and it just feels so wonderful.
I'll explain...
As the years have passed I have been evolving professionally and the changes have been the same as for many of us, fast and on a trial basis, since we are in the trial and error phase of how this new digital world is going to work. At the same time, I continue to prepare myself as a professional and now I am not only a Pedagogue but I am internationally certified as an English teacher, in Coaching, in Psychology and I have been specializing in ASD, ADHD, OCD, Epilepsy and Neurosciences.
I went from being a face-to-face teacher to being a nomad teacher. It wasn't easy for me to stop being a face-to-face teacher, because I am hyperactive and kinesthetic, that means that I cannot stop moving and that I want to touch everything, so to speak, for me sitting for long periods of time meant death and total boredom, hyperactivity is not only constant movement but it is also attention deficit and that means that not only do I have a hard time sitting for a long time without moving but doing the same thing through the computer would completely bore me and I could never stand such a class.
The first months of confinement due to the pandemic I had private lessons at my student's homes and I limited myself to the contact I had with them; The number of students I had was small because I didn't want to have much contact with so many people. Let us remember that the pandemic was just beginning and not much was known about COVID-19, it was only heard how so many people got sick and unfortunately how many others died, this caused the demand for lessons to rise, both in face to face and online, but at that time I refused to work online because of what I already told you, I can't stop moving and I get bored quickly and if I don't move I get bored and I fall asleep.
Months passed and things just seemed to get worse with COVID-19
With the pandemic, nothing was clear and I had to adapt and start teaching online; I always tried to make everything as dynamic as possible, not only for me and my crazy ways but for the students as well, the brain is only attentive in short periods and you have to constantly motivate it, students after 5 to 10 minutes get distracted and if I can't retain their attention They are not going to learn and they are going to think that either they are bad or that I am bad and it is not like that, if you know me than you know that I will not accept any of those options. What is the other option? I have to make my way of working online as effective as the face-to-face one!!! There isn't any other way. It's not about whether the student is good or bad or whether I'm good at teaching or not, here what I have to do is bring my dynamism to the computer. Since I started my online classes I have been evolving and adopting different strategies to work, I have learned to program and I have created some amazing interactive activities that are part of the program of the school where I worked at the time, I have taken my creativity to the screen , I have modified the way of working with emotions and much more.
Today I thank God and I feel very blessed for having developed a learning method that is completely adapted to me, to my way of teaching, it allows me to be dynamic and attract the attention of my student as well as retain it, it allows me to work with the 5 skills, with American or European phonetics depending on the student's preference, I can give my student options on the exercises that we are going to work on so that they have a say, at the same time I work on teaching through NLP and I use Coaching a lot so that it is reflected not only personally but also in the language. I also allow myself to be aware of any other learning trait and be able to work with those qualities and singularities that each of us has, such as: ASD, ADHD, OCD, Epilepsy and Neurosciences.
This method not only adapts to my way of teaching and to the student's way of learning, but also to who I am, truth be said, I have all those singularities that my students may possess and, as I told you, my ADHD coupled with all the chaos that exists in my brain make me a passionate traveler and my work and method go with me every time I leave and the quality of my lessons will increase. When I am in a special place we will take lessons from there as we have done until today and we will learn a little about the local culture.
I'm going to live around the world and my students go with me...
... everything is just a click away.
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