#going2

                                 You know why? Because he claimed, oh so wisely and knowledgeably, that we have all the time in the world. 

And we don't.

Sometimes it feels like I barely have enough time to get through the day successfully managing to tick off all the basics, like brushing my teeth and remembering to put shoes on, before all of a sudden it's time to go to sleep again.

Life sometimes (or most of the time) feels like a whirlwind carousel set on fast-forward, where you feel as though you're constantly chasing your own tail, desperately trying to get things done. And I don't even have long commutes or a school-run to fit in.

I've been teaching ESOL and EFL for almost 18 months now, and I had a recent revelation. Well, more accurately, I recently had one of my expectations well and truly crushed.

You see, I've been expecting things to calm down, so I can really get organised and start carving out a career-path of some sort in the whole EFL business.

Ha, I hear you harumph sarcastically, she's off her rocker. Or words to that effect. Calm? She should be so lucky.

But I'm not kidding. I honestly thought that after a year, I would feel confident, competent, and I would have banked a gazillion lesson-plans and activity resources, thereby giving me the ability to plan and run sessions at the drop of a hat. 

Not so, my friends. There's just so much out there. It might look like there are 6 straightforward CEFR levels, but let me tell you, there are hundreds of tiny sub-levels of progress within each one. And each of your learners is guaranteed to be at a different one. And your planning should surely take this into account.

Not to mention that you should consider the varying ages, experiences, cultural background and personal preferences of each of your students if you want your lessons to appeal to them.

And the internet? With all its millions of brilliant free worksheets and interactive games. Well, it's massive. Trawling through it is a full-time job in itself.

But of course, you already know all this.

My point is that there is simply never enough time. And there never will be. There will always be more planning to do, more articles to read, more marking to get done, new technologies to get your head around. 

And that's ok.

Realising and accepting this has been my lightbulb-moment for this week. My approach of attempting to finish all my planning before embarking on reading all the articles I've bookmarked this week or finding some good webinars to get involved in for my professional development is just plain impossible. Planning will never be completely finished, and so I'll always feel like I'm just scraping by, constantly selling myself short, and never ever developing myself.

Well, no more.

From now on, I'm going to do one thing each week to develop and challenge myself. It might be using a song in the classroom (something I've so far managed to avoid), it might be playing linguistic Bingo with my students (cutting things out and explaining how games work - who's got the time for that?), or it might be something outside teaching-time like observing a colleague or attending a workshop.

Whatever it is, each week I will know I've definitely moved one step down my own personal EFL road. And that, my friends, is what they call progress.