Turning off the lights

Celebrating Earth Hour here. I guess the phrase "We should do this more often" applies :)

On spring and poetry

I've come across a wonderful book by Zubeida Jaffer, a South-African journalist and activist. Our generation speaks of the struggle against the apartheid, from the perspective of a young mother (the author herself). The Preface of the book is an astounding poem by another illustrious South-African, Njabulo Ndebele. It's a simple yet, as it often happens, impressive piece of work which reminded me why I should start reading (and perhaps teaching) poetry again. Before I post the poem, I'd like to mention Poetry Archive, a great reservoir of poems destined (obviously not exclusively) to educators and students. Still on the topic, I strongly support and recommend this Creative Writing course. It's the same one I took as a student, and I can safely say it's a rewarding learning experience.

And here's Be gentle, by Njabulo Ndebele, taken from this blog:

Be gentle on my mind
please do be gentle,
soft;
do not crowd my mind
with studied images of my past;
let me feel it first:
do not display my carved rituals
at the British Museum,
for little do they say;
let me feel them first.

It is the fairy tale in me,
the story book
that is the pure tale of my being.
Do go gentle on my mind,
softly please,
soft.

I'm going back to my book now, enjoy spring and the rest of the weekend :)

Cyprus via Germany

I had a really busy week last week. Took me a few days to get back on track. First, I went to Dortmund for a Colloquium dedicated to PhD students. I had the opportunity of receiving feedback on my work so far from a reputed German scholar, Berndt Ostendorf, specialist in American studies. I haven't often met people so inspiring as him, so I'm grateful for this meeting and I cherish every moment of it. What's more, all the presentations were very interesting, so I had a good deal to learn from all the other PhD candidates and form our supervisors.
Then, I flew to Cyprus for the WCES international conference on educational studies. I had a great life and learning experience there too. You can watch here the presentation I delivered. It's about integrating web tools into the ESP classroom and about connecting students from around and across the world.
I'm back home now, and I'm much richer :)

Motivation

A very inspiring video which reminds me I love being a teacher every time I watch it.. It also motivates me to do an extracurricular activity, but I'll write about that if it ever comes to life :)

Blue

Sia | Soon We'll Be Found from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Proud member

... and learning a lot from this experience. I wish I had more time to follow EVERYTHING that goes on there! Maybe I'll catch up after the exams are over, the papers are graded, the PhD is "updated", ...

Respect '89