My first ever blog post… in history… ever… hmm… what to write?
Ermm… Hmmm… Lovely weather we’re having.
So after five years of making websites and five months of tweeting on Twitter, I have decided to enter the blogosphere. This first post is perhaps the most difficult.
Do I welcome everyone and outline grand plans, thoughts and ideas that will change the world of English language teaching?
The first part, yes (welcome everyone); the second part, not on your Nellie.
Do I tell the story of how I became an English teacher? It all started way back in 1989 when I was backpacking around South-East Asia and ran out of money. I met…
No, that won’t do. That’s all been done before.
OK… so do I write about my very first observed lesson on my CTEFLA (now CELTA) course in Izmir, Turkey. I could describe in great detail how I lost total control of my lips, voice, thoughts, lesson plan and heartbeat in the first second and wanted the floor to swallow me up so I could go home.
Nope. The shame of it all :-O.
How about a potted history of my teaching career? OK. OK. I know the feeling. We won’t go there.
Well… the story of how I used up my life savings to start an Internet site which I thought would make me millions but only made me 26 cents a day after six months?
Uh-Uh – Way too embarrassing.
Now. What I could do is talk about why I’m starting a blog. Logical enough.
Oh… OK then. I’ll do that. I never really read blogs until I joined Twitter and then came across some incredible, inspiring and thought-provoking sites written by extremely dedicated bloggers. To name but more than a few: Shelly Terrell’s Teacher Reboot Camp, Karenne Sylvester’s KalinagoEnglish, MarxistELF, Alex Case’s TEFLTastic, Burcu Akyol’s blog, Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day, TEFL Matters by Marisa Constantinides, Ozge Karaoglu’s blog, ESOL Courses from Sue Lyons-Jones, Jason Renshaw’s English Raven, Steven Anderson’s Web20Classroom… The list is long.
I now love reading the thoughts and ideas contained in these blogs. I have learnt so much from these superb professionals. They keep me on my toes and my fingertips busy.
Of course, they also make me think a lot more about teaching, what it means to be a teacher, technology and how political an issue making a lesson on red squirrels can be.
They all got me thinking about blogging and contributing. So here I am.
They do say the second blog post is the most difficult…
We’ll see.
I heard it’ll rain tomorrow.
