Confessions of a Languages Teacher 1 - Being Forgetful

I know that we all have regular challenges in our teaching lives and it's nice to know that we aren't alone.

So I’m going to tell you about one of the times I was forgetful!

A few weeks ago I forgot to take the audio recording for one of my classes. This is my advanced French class and I love working with them, so I knew I could explain to them what had happened and that we'd work round it. And that it wouldn’t be a complete disaster.

I could have kicked myself, though.

I'd prepared the exercises, done the photocopying, uploaded the audio to a Google drive. 

I was all set. 

Or so I thought!

I'd uploaded the audio to the wrong Google drive and I didn't have access it to it in my classroom!

So I had to think on my feet.

My alternatives were to use an audio that I knew I had access to but wouldn’t fit in particularly well with my class planning. Or just read the text out myself. I do prefer to have the audio available because it saves my voice - at the end of a week where I'm teaching a lot, my voice does suffer. 

So I bit the bullet and read the text out myself.

And it worked well.

I bet you've been there before. All prepared - just to forget one vital element. You're not alone - you're not the only one.

I knew the importance of having that audio available.

But I’m only human - things happen

I'm not a native speaker and especially for my advanced learners I like to use the audios from my website in my class which are recorded by native speakers.

As I say, though, it wasn’t a disaster, I go through it - and I know you can too

If you've had any challenges in your classroom that you've managed to work through please drop me a message I'd love to hear from you.

Barbara x

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