Guest posts #sandwichreflection

#Sandwichreflection  Guest post

Ageliki Asteri

A brief BIO

I have been a freelance ELT teacher for more than fifteen years now. I usually teach general English classes and as exams are a growing body in Greece, I quite often teach exam classes, too.

I come from a different theoretical background though, as my first studies were in social psychology and I cannot really recall how I came into this profession. I think it was just destined and it took care of itself!!

Though I love and appreciate my life’s choices and I am not the kind of person who follows social stereotypes, I can say that being a teacher is one of my life’s most fulfilling choices!!

I owe so much to teaching and for this reason, teacher development is part and parcel of it. 

                          #THE SANDWICH REFLECTION

I liked Joanna’s idea about the sandwich reflection effect .In fact, focusing on the negative parts of ourselves seems to me as a kinda widespread culture where people feel , subconsciously , guilty about themselves. So, it was about time we changed attitudes and see the glass half full, instead.

My story goes as follows:

The good thing is that after years of pondering on doing DELTA, last year I took it up. The DELTA is a worth doing. It is a challenging course which absorbs much of your time. One is immersed in it, sometimes you are drained and time is not enough. It’s actually a mesmerizing course, an experience that transforms the teacher for good. You have the pre -DELTA and post-DELTA era as a teacher.

The weakness lies in how I took it up; the DELTA is a modular course (three of them) and one can take one after the other. My eagerness led me to taking the blended course while working a full time job! This affected me. I was over-stressed which immediately meant that I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to. It was hard to gain the knowledge and insights it offers. We all know development takes time to take place. We need to do things with joy because our brain releases the dopamine, serotonin hormones that help knowledge to be absorbed.

Another good point: I am much happier with how I approach my lessons. The lesson plans I make are based on my learners' needs. I am not coursebook dependent either which is something else that pleases me.

The important lesson I learned; I will definitely go on with the modular version of the course because I want to enjoy what I do to the full and avoid being overwhelmed. What matters is how you do things, how meaningful they are for you and let them take their real time in your life. The journey to ITHAKA is much more important.

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Ahmed Wagih

Note from Joanna: If you want to take part in the #sandwichreflection but do not have you own blog, you can let me know and I will gladly publish a guest post. Just leave a comment in the comment section : )

Till next time.....