New post, New post...

That's the trap you fall into when you decide to become a blogger: you start feeling an obligation to continue posting even if you do not feel inspired or you don't feel you have something important to say. But there it stands, on the top right side of the webpage, the request "new post" trying to make you write again. It reminds me of the familiar-to-all-of-us facebook question "what's on your mind?"  proudly presenting itself every time I log in, trying to convince me that I need to share with my friends what is in my mind and that they will be intersted in reading it.(doubtedly though). And how come every time I read this question my immediate response-thought is "what do you care? It's none of your business".

At first it seems like a stable point of view but then the miming tendency gets to work. Being bombarded by everyone else's posts, thoughts, beliefs, comments, reports on where they are and what they do, you start feeling like an alien, thinking if everybody else does it, why not me? How many cases do we all know,including ourselves, of people creating facebook accounts, refusing to post photos and personal information at first, but, as time goes by, smoothly and naturally they just forget about it and feel like "sharing with the people around them"...so what? they say...everybody else does it and it's fun. 

While this may be true for (some) people aged 25+, not the same can be said for teenagers and children at a very young age. They do not even face the dilemma of keeping some privacy because they do not even realise how far the term "public" goes...And let's face it, social network users are of some unconceivable age numbers like 8,9..With parents working all afternoon or parents being busy in front of a computer screen, it's a one way road, most travelled by, that is convenient for everyone. It keeps children busy, gives parents the freedom to be involved in what they do and time flies in a pleasant way for both sides. The more time children spend on the internet, the more they post, they publish comments, pictures, add personal information, interests, locations, dreams (dreams? that's a whole other story,probably in another post).

Even so, the outcome is the same. Children, teenagers, adults,elderly :-) keep posting their lives, our lives on the internet. Whether done with some second thoughts or done immediately does not matter in the long run and does not qualify as resisting the temptation. Nor is this a problem-solution conversation as it is not a problem for everyone and for those that it is, we can always turn off our PCs. I wonder why we don't do it and start living a little bit.

In any case, the last thing I would wish if I were a child, is all my childhood memories to be consisting of likes and pokes. On the same basis, would we like to get older and have conversations like " ..Remember when you posted that awesome photo on facebook and got 30 likes? ah...the good old times!" :-) Not so unlikely for a great number of people, especially younger! At least, let's hope they'll be doing it in person with a glass of wine and a bite to eat, not just cables and screens.

Anyway, just fullfilling the need to create a "new post", because I may have not mentioned it earlier, I belong to that generation aged 8+, trapped into the labyrinth of continually posting. Fortunately, it's still daytime and the sunlight shows the exit.

Thoughts on motivation and wherever they lead to..

What is it that motivates us to learn? And how does this "magic moment" in time come when the learning process is accelerated by us, ourselves, while maybe some time earlier we felt we hadn't been making much progress, information is too much or too difficult or even boredom to try hard was keeping us behind?

It seems we have all experienced that, on our students and on ourselves. While stability or a silent period seems to be prevailing, there comes the moment that changes everything. To whom does that motivating hand that gives the push belong? Where does motivation that brings about the desired result come from? What is it that managed to "unlock" and unblock the brain and helped it process the input,use the feedback effectively, acquire the knowledge and put everything taught into practice?

Even the slightest, tiny, apparently unimportant thing can qualify for that. It can be a person,a teacher, a fellow-student,something that a person said or did, even something watched on a video that clicked and made everything work.And of course, the right timing.

As teachers, we should not underestimate the power of verbal language and how what we tell our students can make a difference to them, even if sometimes they don't seem to be paying attention. Not only that, though. It is also non-verbal language, what we do not say  that can be proven to be of crucial importance. How we lead our lives, our attitude, the way we address problems, the way we behave to others and to ourselves, even the way we dress, no matter how silly it may sound, have the power to influence a learner. Our motivation to learn, our thirst to learn from everything will give them a reason to become thirsty too...

There so much to it that one could be writing for hours and make it confusing for the reader. All in all, I think it is our acceptance of ourselves, with all the flaws and merits that will make us accept the others and be able to non-verbally say to our students that it's ok to be different. They will get the message because acceptance or judgement are felt without being expressed, they juat float in the air. But again, to accept others as they really are, we have to accept ourselves first. Constantly trying to be the best version of us will give incentives to our learners to do the same and vice versa. Cause it is never a one-sided relationship. It is interaction. They learn from us and we learn from them...fortunately!