Me, Myself and Teaching

It’s that time of the year again….. Time for feedback, time for resolutions….

Here I go!

What happened to me last year?

Oh how much I owe to twitter and my PLN, I really can’t express that.

Last year’s number 1 event was my blogathon experience. I couldn’t win the GOLD but I was lucky to go to Brighton as the 1^st runner-up. This also enabled me to become real life friends with British Council Turkey team and the gold winner, Karin Tiraşin. The whole event was great, meeting my PLN, attending sessions, British Council trainers and their friendship and new friends. I enjoyed the whole event so much that I decided to be back in 2012 and I’m so happy that my proposal has been accepted and I’ll present in Glasgow 2012 and to my surprise me and Karin will take part in the same symposium on technology with teens. Life is full of surprises and makes our ways meet again and again.

Another biggest event of last year was ISTEK ELT, where I happened to present twice because I was in the wrong room with some participants on the actual day, wheras some other participants waited me in the right room and Burcu and her team were very kind  to arrange to repeat the session for the ones in the right room again. ThenI managed to present to a full room participants where Petra (@TEFLPet) was there to support me.

Last year finally we managed to find partners for a Comenius project and in July, I learned that we were accepted. After months-long email writing, we finally met in November in Romania. The whole trip was a great learning and sharing event. I love my Comenius team very much and till the end of the project, I’ll keep posting about our progress.

And Last week I was in Antalya. I was invited there by Turkish National Support Service of eTwinning to present my eTwinning projects.  40 successful teachers  from all around Turkey were invited there as well and we were rewarded because of our work and received netbooks as our prizes.  During, before and after the workshops we had chance to share our experiences and we spent a great 4-day, learning from each other.

My students who graduated from high school can become my Facebook and twitter friends, in this way we keep in touch. Sometimes we even come together for a coffee or a little chat. They visit us at school and give some feedback on how their learning at highschool helped them to be successful at university. Two students visited us recently and told that how our web 2.0 projects were useful for them and how their instructors praised them another one just told me how she was accepted to the MA programme after a successful interview. However, this year’s surprise was from a student studying American Culture and Literature at Istanbul University. She came to school on a Friday and said she wanted to give me a book as a present and opening her bag, she handed me a very thick novel, a romance and when she saw my expression, she told me to open and see what’s in it. There, her name was written as the translator. I was close to tears and I feel very proud of her.

Isn’t teaching the most rewarding, satisfactory occupations? Sometimes you get tired of motivating yourself but out of the blue you find people who see what you have been doing and praise your work. I hope all my dedicated colleagues get this support when they need in 2012.

Happy Holidays to all of you 🙂