My husband just came in and excitedly said, “I’ve changed the towels tonight.”
No response while I hovered over my computer.
“You know tomorrow is Clean Towel Wednesday, right?”
Oh, that’s right. We celebrate different holidays these days.
I had my own moment today, as well.
“I’m going to alphabetize the spice cabinet,” I announced after dinner.
And that’s what I did.
We have too much time on our hands.
I was inspired yet again by my friend Sheri Edwards. She recently created a great post, “Blog Images,” about making and finding images to enliven your blog posts. As photo resources have continually changed over the past decade, I learned some tips that were new to me. I made the above layered images on Google Slides from this video I found on Richard Byrne’s post that Sheri had shared.
This month, my students are doing a collaborative project with art, computer, and English about their #OneLittleWords. They are writing a paragraph, poem, and slide show video, along with a piece of art they did in art class. We are learning together and growing as we get to know and help each other with the challenges before us in 2019.
The #blogging28 challenge for 14 January was to “offer to help someone start a blog.” It was funny that day I happened to be with a friend and she mentioned that she reads a lot of blogs. It was the perfect reminder for me to offer to help her make her own.
We went out for lunch the next day and brainstormed topics for her blog–education, learning, being a principal, being a wife and mother, faith, intentional living, and more. She had lots of ideas! It’s a work in progress, but it was fun to offer to help. (I’ll be sure to add a link to her new blog when she starts it.)
Here are a few pictures from our lunch at a new Gujarati restaurant. (We walked to the restaurant from our school.)
I just came to my computer after a busy day to comment on a blog post for #blogging28, but I saw this tweet and conversation by Sheri and Wendy regarding Wendy’s playful post for the #MoDigiWri challenge and Sheri’s response.
Wendy’s Word Work https://t.co/hyPHCWdmHo #modigiwri #blogging28 for @wentale Thanks for the reminder @anna_phd
— Sheri Edwards (@grammasheri) January 15, 2019
(Click Sheri’s tweet to read their poetic conversation.)
I hadn’t met Wendy, but I do know Sheri, and so it was a sweet moment to see Sheri conversing with a wordsmith soulmate, off on a lexical lark.
I was curious and had to try.
Opening my favorite online dictionary for English learners–Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English–(for I too have no paper dictionary), I pointed to a random letter on Sheri’s post and then chose a random page from the N’s. (I used the second column on my PC, starting with neonatal. I didn’t want to use the first six words, all forms of neighbor.)
So many proper nouns! Oh, well. I took the challenge, so I’ll write a story.
The neophyte neonatal nurse from Nepal was on WhatsApp conversing in Nepali with his nephew, when the supervisor barged in shouting,“Nepotism!” Since the nurse’s mother was director of Neptune Hospital, perhaps it was true. Suddenly embarrassed, the nerdy supervisor sheepishly went back to his break researching Nero and Neruda.
OK. That’s not as easy as they make it look!
That’s all for now, but there is something strangely satisfying about creative constraints.
I have rarely regretted going into education; it is the hardest and best profession there is. It is a job full of creative opportunities, rich relationships and camaraderie, and surprises.
Today I was reading student dialogue journals.* This gem came along:
Dear Mrs. Denise,
How are you? I’m fine. You remembered me when I was in KG2. I always say “I don’t know.” And now in Grade 5, you’re saying to me I’m a good problem solver.
Your student,
Ali
Of course, how could I forget Ali? When I met him, it really did seem the only thing he could say in English was, “I don’t know.”
It was five years ago, and I was new to Bahrain, new to ELL students, and new to kindergartners. I learned a lot that year. So did Ali.
Fast forward five years, and I have the pleasure and privilege of teaching Ali’s class again. Now, he doesn’t say ‘I don’t know.’ He has learned to figure out what he doesn’t know through observation, good questions, and a desire to learn. I am so proud of him.
My response to Ali’s letter was easy to write. His letter was a delightful reminder and a sweet teacher reward for today.
*Dialogue journals are a great activity in the English language learner classroom. I learned about the process through a TESOL book called Dialogue Journal Writing for Non-Native English Speakers: A Teacher’s Handbook. Teachers and students share dialogues in a notebook. The student writes about anything, asking questions about academics or life. The teacher writes back, modeling good writing and answering questions students have posed. The teacher writes a reply of comparable length to what the student wrote. This is a time for authentic conversation, not convention corrections, though you did notice I asked Ali to use I, instead of i for the personal pronoun. Occasionally I will give them one thing to work on, especially something like “I” that we’ve worked on and I expect mastery.
More resources about Dialogue Journals
I started this blog several years ago in the fall of 2010. It was all new for me and my junior high students. We gradually learned to blog, thanks to the Kick Start Your Blogging Challenge from Edublogs and the biannual Student Blogging Challenges. It was great and we made lots of connections.
When I came to Bahrain, I blogged less and less. I’m not sure why. Is blogging losing popularity? Am I too busy? Has my blog become too politicized instead of education-based? Did I move too far away from my connections, who are mostly in the US and Canada? I don’t know why.
Anyway, when I saw Simon Justner‘s tweet about a January challenge to get my blog going again, I paid attention:
Have you dabbled with blogging in the past but struggled to maintain momentum? You're not alone!
We're here to help with a new 28 DAY CHALLENGE for educators to get you off to a great start in 2019. 🎉
Who's in? Comment on this post and let us know… pic.twitter.com/pn7se2ag8G
— Simon Justner (@SimonJustner) January 2, 2019
I think I’ll give it a try. I do want to sow more seeds of kindness, love, learning, and creation in 2019, so blogging can be a place to share about what is going on in my life.
I like this “bite-sized challenge” as Kathleen described it.
Bite-sized is good. I can do it, and I hope some of my friends–old and ones I’ve yet to meet–will join in as well.
Wow, who would have thought that I would go back to 2011–to one of my first blog posts–and update it today, almost 8 years later?
Yesterday’s ‘assignment’ for the #Blogging28 Challenge was to update an old post, something I had not really tried previously. I looked at a few posts and couldn’t think which to do, so I skipped that day’s work.
Today, when going to leave a comment on Tiziana’s blog (today’s task), her post reminded me about the summer of 2011 when I met people like Sandy Millin, Chiew Pang, and Fiona Mauchline. I went back to this post.
If you read in the comments, you can see the quick answers I received to my questions. Chiew was right; it was easy to join in the #eltpics helpful and welcoming group.
@aClilToClimb Great, thanks! Wow, that is easy! http://bit.ly/m5Ag58 #jjaproject #eltpics
— Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs) June 8, 2011
I joined the #eltpics community for a few years, even when I wasn’t an ELT teacher, contributing and benefiting from the amazing pictures shared by others from around the world. Then I changed positions, got too busy, and lost touch. Now, I find myself in a position where I have learned so much more about English language teaching. I’m teaching 50 grade 5 students and one adult learner. I’m also studying for a TESOL certificate. I find I need people and their amazing expertise. Reading Tiziana’s post and reconnecting with this one brought up two new questions for me:
All these images were taken by @mk_elt and shared on #eltpics.
The more I learn about being part of the 21st century digital world we live in, the more I firmly believe it is about creating, contributing, connecting, collaborating and curating. It is so fun to learn something new and to join with others who are doing and sharing these things, as well.
This morning I learned about a resource that dedicated ELT educators are contributing to the world! Thanks to others who were willing to join the conversation, those of us involved in the June, July and August Project (Twitter hashtag #JJAProject) learned about eltpics today. I had never heard of the eltpics Flickr Photostream for teachers until I saw these tweets come by this morning:
Thank you to Sandy and Chiew for telling us about the wonderful photos available for educational use from eltpics.
I created the image at the top of this post with photos in a set called “Things Shaped Like Letters” by eltpics shared on Flickr with a Creative Commons BY-NC-2.0 License. I used Big Huge Labs Mosaic Maker to put them all together to spell my name with these lovely organic images. Can you read it?