There’s a new gun in town
Throwing weight around
Scared of the open gate
When all else fails….escalate!

So diplomacy has failed
The ship of peace has sailed
Not gonna sit around and wait
When all else fails….escalate!

There’s a plan in place for winning
A great reset, a new beginning
The hawks will thrive on hate
When all else fails….escalate!

Today I’m feeling:

Happy and content

Today I’m grateful for:

The small teacher’s room that I’m able to use for my students to come and read, practice and discuss things. The room has, at times, been full of equipment, junk and other teachers. It is now quite clear of things so I’ve taken advantage of its availability.

The best thing about today was:

As mentioned yesterday I was frustrated with one class and had an idea for today which involved using the teacher’s room.

Instead of standing at the front of the class and instructing I started by asking the students to recall things we’d discussed this week on the topics of hobbies and clothes. I then split them into five groups and asked each group to come into the teacher’s room where we first discussed the activities they enjoyed or found boring and secondly to discuss what they thought about school uniforms which they got more animated about.

They used a lot of Thai and I used a couple of the top students to help translate but a few of them were also able to articulate their thoughts in English too. I

t went well for all five groups and I think everyone enjoyed this approach. I only wish it was possible to carry out classes like this all the time.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Despite my best efforts to keep food and drinks (except water) out of my classroom students still smuggle them in and left a lot of garbage and spilt drinks today. I handled it by cleaning up a little and thinking about how to make it better in future.

Something I learned today?

I watched a documentary about Paulo Coelho and wondered if I would like him in person or not.

I’ve only read one of his books so far and enjoyed it a lot but I was thinking if this person was explaining similar things in direct conversation then would I react the same way? Maybe I find it difficult to separate the words from the personality in conversation.

I find the spoken word can be overbearing whereas the written I can ruminate on without other influences involved.

I know some people in my life have given me their wisdom in conversation and I initially rejected it because of other things about them.

It’s all a reminder to find my own way and that even the worst of people can offer useful words sometimes. Take it all in and filter out what I don’t need.

What do you love most about yourself?

I’ve recently been looking at my diary from 1981 and see comments like ‘I am great’, ‘I will win’ etc and it reminded me of the positive attitude I had towards myself at that time. That was all well and good but I never learned how to deal with failure properly which was part of my downward spiral in the coming teenage years. I was even conscious of it at the time but didn’t know how to manage it.

Anyway, these days I am more confident again, with occasional lapses, and feel pretty good about myself most of the time. I love that I still have the determination to improve myself and not rest on my laurels.