The Present Is Your Present

I’ll be posting less over the Xmas holiday.  I want to bury my head deep into some ed tech projects I’m working on.  One regarding short term memory and testing, the other fantastic curriculum for learners/teachers. Stay tuned for some big announcements in 2016.

Wishing everyone a great holiday season with loved ones.

I’ve traveled a lot over the span of my teaching career.  Still in exile, in a way, here in beautiful Guatemala.   I was going to travel home but now plans have fallen through. But that’s good – we must embrace the present. And that’s the message I want to send here with this post.

I’ve had the luck to spend a lot of time in Corsica, France while teaching in Europe and Canada early in my career. Months every year, with books, with sun, with friends and conversation. One Christmas there was very special.

I’d arrived from Canada and had gifts for everyone. Got up all excited and we exchanged gifts. However, only the children got gifts, not the adults. I felt like an idiot, having bought gifts for the adults too. Further, it was the first Christmas morning I hadn’t got even ONE gift. Later that day, I went out to my “office” – a pagoda that sat high on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Ajaccio. I wrote this poem.

It remains special to me. As a teacher – it tells me to enjoy the moment of teaching. Just “being there”, like Peter Sellers in that amazing film.

ON BEING PRESENT

Everyday I say thank you for
the new morning.
But should the morning
not be given,
Ah! how I’d wake up
and embrace the newer night!

It’s like the first Christmas
you finally don’t
get anything.
Ah! How then
the bells ring in
the present!

If you enjoyed this – you might enjoy Stories to Inspire and Teach on EFL Classroom 2.0 or this post – The Dimensions of the Present Moment.