Reiseleiter und Mitreisende

As I reflect on this mid-point of our learning, I am very excited about new tools to make this journey run more efficiently, but am still missing my fellow travelers. I can get a sense of my traveling guide Dave through the screen, and would love to engage in deeper conversations with my fellow travelers, but up to this point, I feel like I have been traveling alone. That will change this week.

We finally will get to sit next to each other...both in a face-to-face meeting and in exploring how to establish relationships with each other in this new environment. Can I be just as witty online as I think I am in person? What about my accent? In the classroom, it helps me put my students at ease: my English deficiencies allow for them to trust me enough to risk not being perfect in Spanish. Travelers or foreigners are somewhat cuter when they have that accent. But in writing, on paper, or with the lack of the accompanying smile, I might come across as dumb, pretentious, or uneducated. I wonder how that will work out. I also have to be careful which videos I create: not being a native speaker puts me in a double-edged situation. On one hand, I am better at helping students learn since I had to learn Spanish first and understand the struggle. On the other, I am not perfect at it, and broadcasting videos that are not perfect makes me nervous. 

Let's see how that will play out...