Week 2 under lockdown started well. I tried to keep with a routine, so life feels as ‘normal’ as possible under the circumstances, I filmed a whole day to show everyone things that help me maintain balance, I filmed going to the supermarket (stressful!), about online teaching and I was gonna start putting together my vlog from Barcelona.
It’s been a busy week workwise as well, lesson planning, reading about online teaching, filming a couple of videos for young learners.
Come Friday morning I finally had some time to finish the vlog I filmed on Monday but disaster struck. My unbelievably bad luck once again hit me in the face.
My memory card with all my vlog material and worst of all, the gorgeous snaps I took over the last year, memories of great moments are now all gone.
I explain in detail on today’s vlog. I’m still sad and I know there’s worse to worry about but I’m gutted. How’s your week been?
Wow. Just wow. I will always remember the last couple of weeks in every single detail.
Within 10 days, all schools in Italy closed until the 15th of March and after just 4 days that was extended to the 3rd of April, oh and the whole country was to go under lockdown.
What did that mean? A lot of things. How am I dealing with the situation? So far I’ve just been stressed and worried and baffled (how on earth on my first year after quitting my job to travel the world ended up trapped inside four walls?) but I decided to make the most out of it.
My friends and family, even strangers have been asking me how things are here, so I’ve put together a vlog, the first one of a series, documenting living and teaching under lockdown conditions so here it is:
I will soon post more on teaching online from home, coping mechanisms (healthy and unhealthy) and how my mental health has been affected by it. I hope you find it useful!
Oh and somehow I ended up speaking on the radio about it twice, once to BBC World Service before the lockdown and once after with my friend Pat at BBC Radio Solent!
It has been challenging so far but my personal advice is please stay at home, avoid travelling internationally, avoid confined spaces, restaurants, churches, cafes, work from home and help to put a stop on the virus spreading. It will continue to spread if people continue to move about. It’s tough but necessary.
And please follow the WHO guidelines, wash your hands thoroughly and avoid handshakes (that’s how the virus is mainly transmitted, by touching others or contaminated surfaces), cover your mouth when sneezing and coughing, do not wear a mask unless you have symptoms or you have an underlying condition that it requires you to do so, AND STOP PANIC BUYING TOILET ROLL!!
It’s Saturday, just after 12pm, my body aches, I’m still sleepy and exhausted but I’m slowly getting ready for my mini break. My body is struggling, it could do with a few days of rest but my mind desperately needs this break.
I thought long and hard, I’ve been trying for a while now to accurately describe how I feel. I’m normally pretty damn good at it, but not lately. When asked I just say I’m tired but it’s much more than that.
I’m exhausted, I struggle to keep up with the energy levels required to teach, especially children and on some days I lack the motivation, particularly when teaching 4 lessons back to back, running around from school to school.
It’s not an easy job to say the least, let alone when you teach 8 large groups of 16- 25 children (plus two large classes of 16 yr olds, three one-to-ones and a group of adults which also have their own challenges) and after the 100th time that you repeatedly told a student or a class that you don’t speak Italian or waited for them to stop talking so they can listen or gave the same instructions but they just don’t seem to get it or they shout ‘Non capisco!’ even before you finish your sentence, well it becomes frustrating.
It makes me wonder whether this job is for me. Do I still enjoy it? I’m not even sure if I’m good at it. Will it get better? Will it get easier? If I decide to pursue this career does that mean I’ll never have free time again??
Then I remembered a little chart I came across last month, my friend and fellow teacher sent me a kind, encouraging open letter for first year teachers and in that letter it had the following graph (by Wisconsin Education Association) which is so far bang on the money.
To begin with it was exciting, the anticipation of applying everything I learned was off the charts and the first couple of months of teaching was all about survival, keep going, trying to plan amazing lessons in less time and improve whilst also having to do a million other things, but lately I feel sad and disappointed at times.
Disillusionment: a feeling of being disappointed and unhappy because of discovering the truth about something or someone that you liked or respected.
I’m not sure this is what I signed up for and I can’t but wonder whether this is for me, not just mentally but also physically. I guess the fact this is not my first job, I’ve lived and worked and led a different life plays a part. Perhaps this is just a phase. Some lessons are absolutely incredible, the students happily take part in most of the activities, they enjoy learning, I enjoy teaching them and time flies by, others there are so disappointing, disheartening, I don’t even want to be there.
It doesn’t help that I have very little free time to do other things not just work related e.g. lesson planning, if only I had more time to plan more engaging lessons, or time to read resources to help with my teaching and expand my knowledge but also just for myself: write, read, play my guitar, go for a walk, explore.
I’ll give it some time before I make a decision, maybe I’ll soon enter the ‘rejuvenation’ stage, but for now I just need to find the mental and physical strength to keep me going.
Who knows, maybe spending a few days in Barcelona, a city I’ve always wanted to visit, with my bestie who I haven’t seen for months, might do the trick and help me see things clearer.
About two and a half years ago I went to a talk on recognising signs of mental health problems, by Hugh Clarke, the Former Head of Counselling services at London Met University and counselling Psychologist.
It was a brilliant talk (you can read about it here), informative, thought-provoking, we chatted about it for a while afterwards. I still remember how it started, a 5 minute mindfulness activity guided by Mr Clarke. I absolutely loved it and everyone in the room seemed to have enjoyed it too. No surprise there of course. Mindfulness (focusing in the present moment, whilst accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and body sensations, in a nutshell) has been scientifically proven to alleviate anxiety, reduce rumination, improve attention, manage chronic pain amongst many many other benefits .
A lot of people are sceptical, I was initially too. I had tried to practise mindfulness myself before that day but I found it incredibly hard to focus (my overthinking brain struggles to concentrate on just one thing at a time) and ‘aids’ I discovered (e.g. apps), made me giggle, perhaps too cheesy for me. But Hugh’s 5 minute guided exercise completely changed my mind. It wasn’t cheesy, funny, or superficial. It worked fine and by the time we were done I forgot about everything else and my whole attention was turned to the session. It was just perfect.
Fast forward to about a month ago, Nour and I were thinking of ideas on how to start our presentation for our ‘Survival Guide for New EFL teachers’ session and then I had an epiphany. Hugh’s mindfulness opening activity was so effective I still remembered it after all this time, and we all, especially newly qualified teachers desperately need to be able to focus in the moment, do one thing at a time instead of trying to multitask and failing miserably, so why not start our session by giving our audience 5 minutes to relax and forget about anything else?
So, I found a 5 minute mindfulness activity online, similar to Hugh’s but the language used was too ‘formal’ and frankly tacky, so I created my own using my personal experience and a mixture of Hugh’s activity and the ones I found online (I may have borrowed some beloved expressions from Yoga with Adriene). I thought I’d share it in case others would like to use it. A colleague suggested I made a video (for those that may want to try it on themselves) and I would love to but that takes time so for now here’s the instructions (remember to take your time with each step, check your participants’ reactions and act accordingly):
First, sit comfortably on your chair. Close your eyes and relax your shoulders. Place your feet on the floor, if comfortable, your entire soles touching the ground. If you want to giggle, then feel free to do so!
Take a long deep breath (take a deep breath yourself). Now let’s focus on your toes. Wiggle them, feel them, then curl them really tight. Keep curling…. and release. Take another deep breath.
Now move up to your ankles. Again, notice how they feel (pause) and now move on to your knees. Do they feel tense? If so, relax.
Any thoughts that may come up in your mind e.g. what you are doing after this, what you are having for dinner, imagine they are in a bubble and let them float away. Take a deep breath.
Now relax your bottom (pause), your pelvis (pause) and then begin to notice any tension you may have on your back. Take another deep breath.
Now focus on your shoulders. How do they feel? Now lift them up, lift, lift, lift and…. release. Wonderful. Take another breath.
Now relax your neck, gently twist your head left to right and let any tension go.
Now focus on your jaw. Is it tense? Are you clenching? If so, relax your jaw muscles and take a deep breath.
Finally focus on the top your head. Notice if you are frowning, we often do without realising, and relax your eye brows.
Now lift your shoulders once more, lift, lift, lift…. and release. Let any remaining tension go.
Now focus your attention on what’s happening in the room. Notice any sounds you can hear, any smells…
Take one last deep breath… and open your eyes. How are you feeling now?
Thursday, the penultimate day of what felt like the longest January in the history of time.
I woke up in tears. I couldn’t stop thinking of the day my little sister called me to break the devastating news that my grandpa, pappou Costas had died and the day afterwards, the day of the funeral I did not attend, as I was stuck in Cambridge doing my CELTA course.
I remember it vividly, in details, colours and feelings, like it was yesterday. Little moments that I’d normally forget if it was any other day I can recall in excruciatingly painful detail, my little sister and mum messaging me first to say that ‘grandpa was ill’ (he had died but they didn’t know how to tell me), the dreaded phone call afterwards, wandering by the stairs on a quiet corner of the corridor, Shalala asking me if I was OK some time later when I could barely speak at our TP feedback session, crying my eyes out that evening whilst planning a lesson for the following day, the following morning Jonny asking me if I was OK and and his reaction when I burst into tears, sitting outside in the sunshine just before I were about to teach about Mongolian horse racing (the same time as the funeral was taking place in Cyprus) looking up in the sky wishing my grandpa farewell, then remembering that ‘teachers are really actors’ and thankfully making it through my lesson.
Naturally, I started thinking of uncle Spyro’s tragic death just two months later. Again I remember every single detail, visiting him at the hospital a week before he died, in excruciating pain not able to say more than a few words at a time but still in good spirits, getting ready to go see him again a week later but receiving the dreaded phone call to inform us that he had passed away, the eulogy I wrote and ended up reading because my sister couldn’t manage through the tears (not that I did much better), the funeral, the burial, the memorial service for both of them a week later.
I wrecked my brain desperately trying to figure out why. Why do I suddenly feel so overwhelmingly sad about it, 4 months later, 6 months later? Perhaps because I wasn’t there when it happened and I never got closure when grandpa died? But I was there when uncle Spyros died…
Jon and Chris described grief like a circle, the circle is everything about the loved one you lost. At the beginning, you are in the centre of the circle, you cannot see past the sadness and the chaos. As time goes by, you get out of the circle and it gets smaller, you can see beyond it, but it’s always there. You just learn how to live with it.
And they were right..
They were right. It’s always there and at any given time you are back in the middle of the circle again. It’s always there, like an old scar that sometimes bleeds and hurts as much as the first time. And this one isn’t even that old of a scar.
So, grief never really goes away.
I did not suppress it. I cried throughout the day (exhaustion did not help) and choked every time I tried to hum a farewell song written by one of my favourite Cypriot composers, Costas Kakoyiannis, beautiful lyrics by his partner Pambos Kouzalis, who had just lost his brother to cancer, sang by an incredible 14 year old, Georgia Neokleous, who had sadly lost her mum to cancer too. Life is cruel like that sometimes.
That’s grief. It never goes away, if from time to time the pain comes back and you should never suppress it. There is no specific amount of time that you need or have to ‘overcome grief’. You just learn to manage it, but some days it hurts like hell and that’s OK.
Today is one of those days. I miss grandpa’s laughter and silly little jokes, his smile when all his grandchildren were visiting, running around the house, uncle Spyro’s wit, advice and little remedies he always suggested, his endless kindness and patience. It hurts but it’s OK.
I was lucky enough to have them in my life and that’s worth all the pain of losing them.
This is for you. Mr Kakoyiannis song (I translated the lyrics as they were too beautiful not to share and the composer included them in the description of the video).
You left and I didn’t get even get the chance to bid farewell,
say my last goodbyes.
How could I live without you for so long?
I throw water on your path, so a plane tree can grow.
To protect you from all evil, always keep it away, keep you safe.
When we were asked by one of the DoS (Director of Studies) whether we’d like to present at the IH South Italy conference, although I was overwhelmed with all the additional work I took up on top of teaching (putting together promo videos and planning events, which I absolutely love but God it takes time) and barely had time to do anything else, I really wanted to.
I’ve never presented at a conference before. Sure I gave presentations at work and uni, but never at a conference.
‘But what can I talk about? I’ve only been teaching for two months, what can others learn from my experience?’
Most of the days I’ve been over stressed, overworked, overwhelmed, wondering whether I’m doing this well, if my students are really learning and whether all this it’s worth the anxiety, the lack of me-time, of any time to do anything else other than work. If you are a newly qualified teacher you probably nodding your head reading this.
And that’s when I had a light bulb moment. What if I put together a ‘survival guide’ for newly qualified English teachers using the wisdom of existing teachers? I’ve already learned a lot from my manager, our DoS and fellow teachers in the couple of months I’ve been working as an EFL teacher, so imagine gathering all these little nuggets of advice and summarising them into a couple of pages?
I asked James (one of our DoS and the kindest man on earth) if he thought that would be a good idea and he seemed to like it. It’s hard to tell if he really liked it or he was just being polite as he always is but I thought ‘Let’s do it’, I might not get the chance again, who knows where I’d be and what I’d be doing next.
I asked around the room if anyone wanted to present with me, not that I was shy presenting on my own, but there are a lot of NQTs in our school and it would be a good opportunity for someone if they’d like to present. One of my fellow teachers wanted to present with me and to cut a long story short I set up a survey, sent it to teachers we knew and posted it on FB groups and got around 40 responses in just two weeks. Time management is a huge issue for new EFL teachers!
We gave the presentation at the IH South Italy conference yesterday, summarising and demonstrating some of the most common advice on topics we, newly qualified EFL teachers struggle with the most, and I thought I’d share it here too, to hopefully help other newly qualified teachers who may be struggling.
The CELTA can’t prepare you for what’s about to happen when you start teaching children or large classes or full time (also forget CELTA lesson planning time when you start teaching 4-5 hours a day!) so if you need any ideas on how to reduce your lesson planning time and manage your time better in general, or what you can do to help you with teaching young learners, or how to look after your mental health and wellbeing, have a read below.
What I’ve learned so far and I’d advise others (which most teachers recommended in the survey):
-Always have pre-prepared, low resource activities in hand (see ideas below) or lesson plans you have already prepared (start building your own archive), so if you hadn’t had time to plan in detail or ran out of material you can still have a great lesson.
– Plan less, don’t spend hours on it. Most of the time you can’t afford to spend hours. Not every lesson has to be amazing with heavy resource and planning activities. Use the coursebook and extend/adapt some of the exercises, students will still enjoy it (though it is more fun not using the book, especially if the material is not engaging for the students).
-Ask for help. We all regardless of experience give each other ideas and we all help each other with little and not so little things. And if you are struggling, talk to someone!
-Make time for yourself, your hobbies, your passions. Teaching shouldn’t take over your whole life. There is is much more in life than work.
-Making a mistake is not the end of the world. In fact that’s how you learn!
-Look after yourself. Rest, have breaks, sleep. At the end of the day teaching is just a job. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing/ you are too tired/ drained it not only affects your teaching but it’s not worth doing if it compromises your mental and physical health.
(the session started with a 5 minute mindfulness activity I’ll share on another post and also included demonstrations of a classroom routine, giving clear graded instructions, planning an activity for a lesson in a few minutes-yes, it’s definitely do-able- and finished with the audience getting to know each other outside their teacher remit and catching up with friends they haven’t messaged in a while).
Feel free to share and spread the wisdom. The survey is still open if you’d like to share yours. I thought instead of closing it, try to get as many teachers filling it in with their own ideas and advice instead (https://forms.gle/7wqyKbtQ789jVLeu9).
Thank you to everyone who filled in the survey, my co-presenter Nour, my lovely colleagues Maria and Mariah for their super useful feedback and ideas and a very special thank you to James who not only advised and helped me with the survey and PPT from the beginning, even during the Christmas holidays but also for his encouragement and mental support. He even saw the session twice. What a man.
I’m holding a coin wrapped in tin foil and everyone is cheering me. Surreal.
It had just turned 2019 and I was the ‘lucky’ one, the ‘lucky charm’ was in my slice of Vasilopita, the traditional New Year’s cake. Who knows, maybe luck would be on my side this year. That will be a first!
That’s how 2019 started and what a year it’s been!
I regularly self-reflect, that’s how this blog started afterall, but inevitably this is a great time to look back on the year that’s ending and remind myself of all the lessons I learned from my mistakes, my achievements and more importantly everything I’m thankful for.
Whilst going through all these changes I had great adventures with loved ones, climbing up and down hills on our Jurassic Coast Macmillan Mighty Hike, exploring Bruges and Brussels with my little sister, an awesome holiday at Rhodes with my middle sister, I made great memories with friends and family, who I wouldn’t survive with at times, and for that I feel blessed and happy.
It’s not only the end of the year but the end of the decade and well, where to start from?
I can’t possibly reflect in detail and I’m not sure it will help in anything but tο sum up (take a deep breath):
I left Cyprus to do my Masters, I had my first long term relationship of 7 years that left me with emotional scars but taught me a lot and made me who I am, I ended up staying in the UK for 10 years, I had my first ‘proper’ job at Solent Uni where I worked for almost 8 years and lived in Southampton where I met some of my greatest, life-long friends, volunteered, lost myself, found myself again and learned to live on my own and with depression and anxiety, struggled with grief after losing grandma Frosou and aunt Anna, learned how to love myself, tried new things and discovered how to be happy on my own, doing what I like, singing, volunteering, theatre and musical trips, blogging, vlogging, hiking, reading, yoga (with Adriene). And that’s just a summary (breathe again).
I’ll be there for you…
Fontana di Trevi
I guess that’s life. It’s never a smooth ride. It’s full of surprises, ups and downs, easy and tough. Each of us follows their own path and are on their own timezone, so you can’t and shouldn’t compare your life to others but we all go through the same motions. So what matters at the end of the day?
I don’t do New Year resolutions, I find them pointless, I just make a small bucket list with things I’d like to do hopefully in 2020 but that’s another story I’ll post about later.
So what I learned in the last ten years and is my 2020 year and decade wish to everyone other than health, physical and mental (which is THE most important), is be happy, and never let it just depend on others, love, yourself and each other, and enjoy the little things, we truly live in a beautiful world and we often don’t appreciate life’s precious moments.
I hope you all do whatever makes you happy (don’t compromise that for no reason), quit your job if you hate it, devote time on what you love doing whatever that might be, make great memories with loved ones, enjoy every moment with them, you never know when it’s the last time you’ll see them (such a cliche but true), always be kind and try to make the world a better place. If we all do a little, as much as we can, who knows, we might make a huge difference.
Happy New Year! Here’s to a new year and a new decade. Here’s to 2020!
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… Dan!
Once again I’m struggling to decide where to start from. Where and how do I begin? Words are too little to describe one of my favourite humans ever, Dan, though if you know me in person, the chances are I have already spoken to you about him, I’m pretty sure I even talked to strangers about him.
I’ve known Dan for about five years now, when I first joined the Uni’s staff choir, a decision that completely changed my life.
I won’t say much about all the fun, amazing things we did with the staff choir, you can read about it here, I just want to thank Dan for being there for me, particularly this last year, listening, calming, cheering me up, helping me control my anxiety and also sharing one of the most amazing, challenging experiences of my life, our Macmillan Mighty Hike, and oh my, mighty it was, it nearly broke us.
Dan is one of the very few people that can understand exactly how my brain works (in all kind of mysterious, crazy ways) and how I feel without having to say much and I somehow can do the same for him,we are very similar in that way, something incredibly rare. I consider myself extremely lucky our paths crossed.
Thank you Dan. I miss you terribly, especially on Tuesdays afternoon.
What I wouldn’t give for a lunchtime date with Lucy.
I’ve known the awesome, funny, intelligent, amazing, beautiful Lucy for a couple of years now but over the last year we bonded over our monthly catch ups over lunch, talking away our troubles, chatting about mental health, something we are both passionate about, music, food, interesting books we read, musicals, food, holidays, politics, the environment, academia, whatever you can imagine. I’ve learnt a lot from her.
I always felt that Lucy and I could talk about anything and everything openly with no judgement or prejudice and we always, always had a laugh.
Our lunches were our own little monthly therapy sessions.
Lucy would often check up on me, cheer me on and remind me how lucky I am to have such incredible human beings like her for friends.
So thank you my dear, thank you for, well, everything.
I can write a book about Chris and it will still not be possible to capture his endless kindness, incredible sense of humour and impeccable taste in music, food (we love talking about food), travel, films, TV series.
Chris has been an amazing friend, especially in the last few years. He helped me move I don’t even know how many times, he put furniture together for me, he introduced me to some of my all time favourite music and series, he always made time for me and he was always there for me.
We had long and deep conversations on the meaning of life, mental health and life struggles as well as discussions on the best cuisine or dish we had, crime stories as well as random topics we both enjoyed.
When I first started thinking of what was the best thing to do, I told him about it, before I even made the decision. I always ask Chris when I can’t decide, I don’t have to explain much, he always gets me. Very few people do and Chris is one of them.
I remember a few days after I finally decided, we went out for a drink after work and told him about it. I still remember his reaction. He looked sad and happy at the same time and he didn’t even have to say anything. I knew he was incredibly happy for me but also very sad I was going away.
I knew because I felt exactly the same.
I miss our catch ups, long emails, Christmas party dances, random conversations but I’m sure we’ll always be in touch, no doubt about that.
So thank you Chris, not just for all your help and support this year but for always, always believing in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. You are truly one of the most wonderful, kindest, awesome humans I’ve ever met and I’m truly blessed to count me as one of my dearest friends.
Lessons I learned after I turned 30 