New Year = New Me ??
Andrea Gadsbey MCCT
Founder of 'Hope Learning' - a high quality tuition service and educational consultancy | Literacy expert | Multi Academy Trust Teaching and Learning consultant | ECT support mentor
Yes, the glaringly unachievable, soul-searching, fat-loss, echo chamber of self-help leaps into the January gloom once more.
???? Gym memberships soar
???? Personal Trainers carpe their diems
???? Micro self-help newsletters, links, books, Instagram and LinkedIn soundbites flutter around us like noisy dandruff.
Yet, what I look forward to in this soup of self-comparisons are the rich metaphors writers and psychotherapists use to speak to us, to try and reach us through their channel of good intentions.
Like many, I’ve been scrolling through the New Year advice dominating my feed (although not too much of course, we’re all on a digital - as well as physical - diet, remember?) and I am impressed with the range of metaphors competing for our connection and understanding.
#neveroffduty as an English educator and language lover, these are some of the best I’ve read so far this month…
?? THE ARTISTIC METAPHOR: Pick up your recurring difficulty, turn it around and look at it from a different angle. Sit with it and you might find more texture or colour within to help you understand it.
????? THE STUCK or TRAPPED METAPHOR: How stuck are you and how can you unglue yourself? What is keeping you in this position? What are the ties holding you in place? Do they serve you or hold you back?
?? THE FOOD METAPHOR: What have we here? Open your ‘food’ cupboard and see what is already in there that you can rustle up for dinner. Use this idea to make realistic decisions about your life: if you want to exercise more, look at what is in your daily cupboard.
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Maybe a 90 min gym visit isn’t an option so begin with a daily 30 min brisk walk. Start with what ingredients you have and cook something realistic.
?? THE GROWTH METAPHOR: Tend to your roots. Work out what you need to nourish them: when to water them, with what and how often. Realise that growth can often be static at first before you uncurl.
?? THE INVESTMENT METAPHOR: Invest in yourself. Analyse where you have overspent. On which aspects of your life? Where are you in debt? Are you carrying excess weight, or struggling with relationships? Where can you save? More exercise, earlier, productive mornings?
I find metaphors are used in this way as a means of connection: to connect the abstract to the tangible. This is why the language we use is full of them and never more so than at this time of year.
?????? Teachers and tutors - how can you explore the use of timely metaphors like this in your non-fiction teaching? It is a notoriously difficult skill to teach, and an area of the GCSE English Language exam that students perennially underperform in.?
Students feel a connection with reading and writing when they can connect a text to the world around them and within themselves.?
Look for evidence around you to help bring cognitively challenging writing skills like metaphors to the reality of students’ lives.
How many metaphors have you spotted that I’ve used in this blog alone???
Happy New Year!
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?? I'm Andrea Gadsbey, an experienced English educator, consultant and teacher trainer with 20 years' experience in education. Follow me for more musings on language and pedagogical training tips for educators.