Free-write 10 minutes. Prompt ‘Skin’. By the hair of my chinny chin chin I will not let you come in. For I intend to stay alive. In my very own skin. I will not to be skinned for your pleasure. I will hunker down into my skin. This skin of mine. Take this skin. And.…
Once they are seated I begin: “Zanzibar, Shimmy, Shiver, Core, Strength, Fuck, Whatever” Question to class: What do you think this is? Silence. Then timidly. A list. A twirly-keep-going movement with my right hand. A list of words… What sort of words? My favourite words. Question to class: What does this say about me as…
Radio silence since September! Did I lose my voice? What happened? Well here’s what happened. I fumbled my way, masked and panting through September. Quite often breathless and sometimes even dizzy as I rushed from classroom to classroom. I became expert at mad gesticulating to make up for mumbling in a foreign language. Only muffled…
I started thinking about writing this post back in the dog days of summer. But it was too hot. Now those days have passed and clouds roil in grey skies. I wear a jumper on my back for the first time in what seems like a long while. Next Tuesday kids are back at school. …
Pleasure and learning and teaching. What better antidote to current unsettled times than to reflect a moment upon the relationship between this trinity. A week or so ago, during an email exchange, a second-year EFL distance learning student (a recently retired polyglot pensioner named Jean) explained to me the following: ‘meeting a new language is…