No more excuses 🌱 A confession of a busy online teacher

Ok ... so let's start with an explanation. I have stopped writing about a year ago. First, it was simply because I was tired and needed a break. I would spend hours curating this page, thinking about what to post, what to write about, what to share with you. Don't get me wrong, I loved it. Just wanted to have a teeny-tiny rest.

Then, March 2020 happened and my teaching was turned upside down 😅

You will never hear me complain about online teaching. I think there's a lot of value in it. It made me learn SO MANY new skills, it forced me to get out of my comfort zone. At this point I actually enjoy it and I feel very comfortable saying that my teaching skills are now on a whole new level.

This being said, I am fully aware of the downsides and those, to me, are purely social and emotional for our students. I do not think that online teaching, when it comes to its educational aspect, is any less valuable than in-class teaching. You simply have to know how to do it and be comfortable doing it.

Two down, now for excuse number three: in September 2020 I was promoted to a Deputy Head position at my school. It was something that I wanted for a long time and I was over the moon when it happened but daaaaamn it's a lot of work 💪🏻

So with these lovely three excuses and always having something else to do, Montenglish went into a very long hibernation.

But as the title of this post says : NO MORE EXCUSES!!

And as I write that all I can hear in my head is "you're not gonna do it, you'll stop after one post ..." So keep your fingers crossed for me because getting into it is not going to be easy for me.

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I've already mentioned that my teaching had to change completely. When I'm in the classroom, I like to create materials that enable my kids to work without me. I just want to drink my coffee and observe ☕️ But with online teaching it had to kind of go the other way. The point now is to spend time with my kids because they need interaction and connection.

Is there such a thing as online Montessori teaching? Hmmm ... well ... honestly? I don't think so. I think it is extremely difficult to translate in-class Montessori principles of teaching to online teaching. I take my hat off to anyone who managed to succeed at that. You can, obviously, try your best to be as Montessori as possible while teaching online. All I'm saying is that it's not easy for me and that I've made a conscious decision to not feel bad about it and to not think any less of my teaching practice. Instead, I decided to learn a new set of skills. I dived into the world of online teaching and took it upon myself to educate all the teachers at my school about it. After all, you learn best when teaching others 😉

I'm writing all that so that you understand why some of my future posts may be slightly different from what you're used to. I'm not creating new materials now, or at least not as many as I used to. I spend my prep time creating slides, interactive games and worksheets. So I might share that with you 😇 When we go back to school, I'll be definitely keeping some of the online tools which I'm using now with my kids so I guess it's worth telling you which ones. So you may look forward to that 😄

There you go! That's the end of my confession 😝 Thank you for reading and please do comment below and let me know that someone is still reading this 😂