English Teacher Travels

After breakfast, we head towards the York Minster. We're feeling adventurous, so we don't just buy an entrance ticket, we also get tickets for the tower challenge. 275 steps, yikes! What where we thinking.... It was a glorious (but windy) day, so we were swayed by the promise of great views all around. In that we were most certainly not disappointed! The views were amazing, we could see so much. The steps are not for the weak though. We had to say that we did not have any health issues like asthma or rheumatism (little white lie, sorry!). After about 1/3 of the steps, you have to cross the roof (there's a little walkway there, we didn't actually walk over the roof hahaha). It was a nice little rest for the rest of the climb up the really narrow steps. One way only, you better not be too wide.... All the way up, we were treated to sights like these: York Minster, unlike Salisbury Cathedral, has an undercroft. There you can find the tomb of St. William (and his reconstruc...

The guesthouse we ware staying at has breakfast included, so I start my day with a full English breakfast. I know the English only eat this on special occasions, but if it's being offered, what's a girl to do? After breakfast we go back to our room to get ready, because we have a bike tour scheduled today.  The starting point is pretty far away, so we decide to take an Uber to the starting point, do the bike tour and slowly make our way back on foot. We meet up with our guide Cecil, a dapper little man with a big passion for York. He takes excellent care of us and makes us feel safe while biking. Later on during the tour we find out that he used to be a fire fighter. That explains a lot, also his way of talking. He is quite factual, but the passion is there. No extreme embellishments or bad jokes, just sharing the stories and information with passion, I love it! We happen to be the only ones taking the tour today, so we're getting a private tour. No complaints there either....

Our host told us we should leave at like 7 AM to beat traffic. But yeah, that's really early. So, like true Dutch people, of course we did things our own way. We left around 9.15, thinking that probably by the time we got to Bristol, traffic wouldn't be too bad. Luckily, we were right. We did follow up on another tip of our host. She said it would be worth our while to stop at the Gloucester services. There would be a grass roof to the building and some kind of farmers market there. We weren't quite sure what to expect, but there was indeed a gras roof and the farmers' market was amazing!  I kept hearing the song "If I were a rich man" in my head while walking around the farmers market. In the end I bought a jar of pickle ("The perfect ploughman's pickle) and a pistachio croissant (as a snack). I haven't tried the pickle yet (it's a gift to my daughters), but the croissant was absolutely amazing. I loved a lot of the things I was seeing, but d...

Bath is only a 20 minute drive away from Kilmersdon. Before we went to Bath, we'd found information about the park & ride options. Basically you park your car somewhere outside the city center and a bus takes you to the city center. You only pay for the bus ride, parking is free as long as you use the bus. We have no idea how they check that though. There is no way you can tell if people actually get on the bus, because they take the bus ticket with them and you only use the payment machine if you aren't using the bus. Or at least, that's what we figured. We didn't see people do anything special other than park their car and go on the bus, so I suppose we're okay (the signs also didn't say anything else). Maybe in the Netherlands we over-explain things, because everything is spelled out. That does have it's advantages, because I feel more certain in cases like these.  The guided tour we'd booked was given by an uni student who is actually from Spain....

Friday's fire made the headlines in the local newspaper:  (source: https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/26052453.salisbury-wetherspoons-closed-fire-causes-evacuation/) The good news was that on Saturday they had the lights back on. The pub was open, but only for drinks (something we only found out after trying to put in an order through the app).  Early Saturday morning we went to Salisbury Cathedral. We were there shortly after the doors opened, which meant that it was still pretty quiet in the cathedral (just how I like places like that, I know I'm also a tourist, but still....). In World War II the cathedral was spared by the German bombers. After the war, the English learned that there was no altruistic motive for this. The Germans used the spire as a landmark, so that they knew where to go next to drop their bombs. That was why all German planes were under strict orders not to drop any bombs near the cathedral.  Inside the cathedral we were lucky enough to he...

We begin the day with breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast we pack up and get an Uber from the hotel to the car rental company. Of course they try to persuade us to take even more insurance than we'd already taken (as in: insure it with us as well so save you trouble should something happen....). We have already taken out insurance, so no thank you kindly. Despite our answer, he kept pushing, but we held firm! No cheating us today!!  Sophie was a champ driving us to Salisbury. The first few miles were somewhat scary for her, but after a little bit she felt fine. Mad respect, seriously! She drove, I navigated and that worked very well. It was pretty busy on the road, but we still made pretty good time. We parked the car, grabbed ourselves a snack and something to drink in record time and made it to the bus stop just in time to catch the bus. If we hadn't caught that bus, we wouldn't have been able to visit Old Sarum.  The weather today is great by the way. This also shows...

Our last day of IATEFL. We start the day by going to different sessions. Sophie chose a session about ADHD, I chose a session about isolation, identity, and polarisation. Nowadays we see people choosing isolation more and more often (earphones, looking at the world through our phones, emailing instead of calling, etc.). This can be used in a positive way, for instance by giving learners assignments to video themselves (and send it to their grandmother, so they'll probably get some positive feedback), or make someone join the class online, because talking to a screen is so much easier than talking in real life. Some quotes the presenter used that stuck with me: "we all love to be loved" and "we don't just teach a language, but also values and feelings".  The second session we wanted to go to was sadly already full, so instead we sat outside on the beach for a while. Such a shame ;) One of the featured events was a talk about AI and formative assessment. This ...

After yesterday, we've completely revised our planning somewhat. No more subjects that we've recently covered at school (which are quite a few).  We started our day with the plenary about emergent language. That was really interesting! Emergent language is unplanned language that is needed or produced by learners during meaning-focused interactions. This language is then looked at through clarification, exploration, or reformulation, with support from the teacher. We've gotten some great tips on how to do this. Sophie & I also noticed that some of our teachers at Windesheim (consiously or unconsiously?) use these techniques in their lessons.  The second session we attended was "Keeping it real: teaching teens". It was an entertaining session, but not really groundbreaking or new for us. We did get some insight into the difference of generation alpha to other generations and some nice tips on how to rethink assignments to make them more active, creative or coll...

Yesterday was the first day of the conference. Some first impressions: it's a lot, we should be more bold and get more freebies, we should not choose talks about subjects that are already covered in our education, our English is excellent (even compared to some of the speakers) and we should try to mingle more today.  After a good breakfast at the hotel, we went to the conference. We'd decided to skip the first plenary and start with the first timers meet-up. There were a lot of first timers! They helped us loosen up a bit and make our first connections (I've joined up with someone on LinkedIn because of it by the way, go me!). The first session we went to sounded really interesting, but after a few minutes, we realized we've covered the subject more in depth at school, so we skipped the rest of that session. We used the rest of the time of that session to cool down a bit in the calmness area. The first timers introduction and the rush to find that first conference room...

Today we've travelled from London to Brighton, because starting tomorrow we'll be attending the IATEFL conference there. The train ride was blissfully uneventful. Brighton is a lovely city. We're staying in a hotel near the conference center, pretty much right on the beach. From our room we can see the water and the beach, so our view is amazing. We can totally see why it is such a popular tourist destination, especially in summer. Today the weather is great, so we got to sit in the sun for a bit as well. We bought some fish & chips and ate it on a bench at the beach. Pure bliss. We've also picked up our badges, so we don't have to stand in line tomorrow (we expect it to be way busier then!). Some photos to tell something about today in images:  A nice little addition about yesterday. Sophie blogged about it already. One of the things our guide at the Shakespeare Globe kept telling us was how those visiting a Shakespeare play were called an audience and not spec...