Posts

Open letter to my students

Image
Dear student, You made it to the last week. We’re almost done with this odd semester we’ve been imposed by an unprecedented situation, and you have done amazing. You quickly adjusted to our new reality, dealt with so much stress and anxiety, and still kept going. I personally could not have asked for more from you, and the patience, flexibility, and resilience you have shown these past few weeks have been inspiring. As much as I’ve been looking forward to the end of the semester (not a usual feeling for me), now that we’re about to hit it I’m getting sad thinking about not seeing you again, at least for a while. I have always been quite open with you, but even more during the weeks of remote teaching. I always have the hope that sharing with you how I feel will make you feel comfortable if you ever have the need of doing the same, and many of you have. I thank you for that, for trusting me, sharing emotions that I’m sure are not always easy to convey.  For me, the end of t
Post a Comment
Read more

The non-teaching part of teaching

Image
Like many others, I think I always wanted to teach because I had great teachers. I'm not talking about people that would just teach things well, but men and women who went beyond the material that they had to cover and would teach you through their own behavior and attitudes. A good teacher truly helps shaping us and our lives. I, for instance, would have never come to the US if it had not been for the encouragement and support of my professor/mentor/friend in Sevilla, Mª Luisa Venegas. What started in 2006 as a 1-year plan developed into something quite different that literally changed my life.  As a professor, I consider it a privilege when students give us access to their personal lives by sharing with us experiences, fears, good news, plans... To me, it is one of the best and more meaningful parts of my job and somehow shows me that my students see me as more than just some woman giving them information that gets tested a few times per semester. But it can be hard too, par
Post a Comment
Read more

Apart. Not alone.

Image
Spanish Chef José Andrés appears in the cover of the latest issue of  Time  for his efforts to help feed those in need (first after Hurricane Maria and now through the COVID-19 pandemic). Next to his picture, the headline "Apart. Not Alone" has been stuck in my head for capturing with three simple words the way I've been feeling through the beginning of our remote teaching journey. I'm very lucky that my first week went really well: 100% attendance and 0% technical issues. Students were happy to get back to class, get some sense of normalcy, see each other, work, and break their new routine for a while. Because of my own personal circumstance, my classes are a hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous teaching, which seems to make them comfortable, as they can work in some of the content at their own pace but also have direct contact and practice with me and the rest of their classmates. It was a little odd that things went so well and felt so “normal”, consider
Post a Comment
Read more

Going remote: planning, challenges, and more.

Since writing has always been therapeutic for me, and I sure feel like I could use some therapy these days, I've decided to start a blog. This is mostly for myself, but seeing the amount of resources that people are sharing with this whole "going remote business", I thought I would leave it public in case someone would consider these posts useful in some way, even if it's just through being reminded that many others are having similar feelings, challenges, etc. during this odd situation. I'm not completely new to teaching online. I taught a hybrid Spanish class as a graduate student at UNC and a remote Medical Spanish course at A.T. Still University (Missouri) after I moved to Winston-Salem. However, the situation we are going through these days is a very different animal. Materials are having to be adapted quickly; decisions about the syllabi, assessment, and more are being made by instructors, coordinators, and administration; and then there's policy chan
Post a Comment
Read more