Category: Education

My classes with Lingueo have been over since 23 April when I had my last class with Delphine. I told you in my last post that I had been scheduled for a client with them starting on 3 May but could not do that lesson because I was already scheduled to work for VIPKid and the following week I was not able to because I was away. On Friday, I got a one-off lesson with a student for two hours of conversation. For the first time ever in my teaching career, I did not prep for this lesson. The lesson was scheduled from 3 o’clock to 5 o’clock on Friday. I therefore had to shuffle a planned Greek lesson with Odhran. The student, whose name is Nicola, called me and asked if we could do an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. That actually worked better for me and I was able to contact Odhran’s mom and schedule a Greek lesson for Friday. Lingueo in many ways is a wonderful platform because they pay you money in euros without taking commission and there is no Walmart sweepstakes atmosphere like there is at VIPKid, or a ridiculous commission structure as there is with Preply. They give the courses that they offer names, like Lilate preparation or oral preparation, but it is not clear what that means. When I first started with the company I researched a bit and it turns out that Lilate is an English competency exam given by the French government. I could not find any preparation materials online. So it has been a struggle to figure out lessons for my Lingueo students since I started with the company. Friday was no exception as I was racking my brain to figure out what I would teach Nicola. But winging it turned out to be a good strategy at least for him. While we had a great time talking, across all kinds of topics but mostly corona procedures throughout Europe. I am not sure that I am going to see him again, though. I looked at his information and he has five different teachers including me. He has had eight out of 20 hours of lessons, two of which were with me. He needs to finish these hours by 1 June. I’m not sure why he waited till the last minute to get started, but if it’s any indication from his schedule and the fact that he was 15 minutes late the first and And second hour, as well as having to leave in the middle of the second hour to take a phone call, it seems that his schedule is not very flexible. He works for Disney and it seems that Disney is starting to hop. As of this writing, I am back to Lingueo limbo with no students on the schedule. After the fiasco with the student who canceled all lessons with me, I updated my schedule to reflect that I could work mornings and afternoons after three, leaving the PPT hours for VIPKid.

Speaking of VIPKid, my strategy to only open short notice on the weekends and short notice for the hours 10 to 12 my time, partially works. While I am getting no short notice bookings during the week, I am getting a few short notice trials on the weekend. Such was the case on Saturday when I had a level seven at 12:30 PM trial and a short notice trial 2 PM. I’ve been thinking about my schedule on VIPKid and I wonder if my schedule is low not just because I am a highly paid teacher (at least on their scale), but also because most of my students are in the higher levels, and so don’t have time to take VIPKid anymore. The company has started asking for referrals for teachers as you know from last weeks post. I wish they would be as aggressive about marketing to actual paying customers as they are asking teachers to recruit for them. It used to be when you recruited you got good money to refer and people made sideline businesses out of that. Now they give you tokens to refer. I’ve already told VIPKid what I think of this strategy, and in no uncertain terms a couple weeks ago when they had another survey. Needless to say I will not be referring.

Over at the Conversation Playground, class three marked the first class that I actually planned part of myself. I continue to feel that teaching kids on a regular basis is not for me. I am very specifically a teacher of English as a foreign language and that is what I wish to remain. What this means is that my schedule will continue to be inconsistent. Things I learned from the last class: giving instructions in a clear concise manner is the most important thing you can do in the classroom. Both instruction checking questions and concept checking questions are important. I remember from my days of CELTA back in 2016, that that was something that was really difficult for me. My solution for the problem was to go back and look at my textbooks and see how they are formulated and how to ask them. I think I’m gonna have to do some memorizing. The more I go into the classroom with the kids in Amstelveen however, The more comfortable I get and that can only lead to good things. Because there will be more work. I connected my English Center student with the Conversation Playground to see if they could jointly set up classes at her son’s school. We’ll see if that works out.

I am experiencing a slow down in writing, chiefly because I’m having a hard time figuring out if I changed a plot point throughout the book or not. I’ll explain. I had my main characters be given a particular magical item that I thought would come useful in the book. It turns out that it’s not and I had to change it for something else. I spent the last Thursday night wondering if I had done that completely throughout the book. It is not a place I like to be. I do not like doubting that I’ve done everything I need to do. I think this feeling is going to stick with me for a while and I may just have to read the book over again. From the beginning. Another daunting task. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a pantser. But the thought of outlining is even more daunting.

In other news, my cataract surgery has been scheduled for 16 June. It’s a Wednesday so I had to cancel all of my classes that day as well as block off a week for VIPKid as I don’t know about the recovery time from cataract surgery. I have been told at the recovery is quick, but I’m not sure if all of those people who have had cataract surgery were spending as much time online at the time of their surgery, as we have been in the last year and a half. Or I should say as I have been over the last five years. I am a little bit scared, OK terrified, but I’m trying not to think about it. Instead I’m trying to distract myself with lesson planning, an imminent return to the gym, and rebuilding my iTunes music collection as all of my non-purchased items have disappeared. Of course I got rid of all of the CDs from which I built my collection 11 years ago. To say that I was pissed is an understatement.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.

This week at Inkreadable, dear reader, may be a prelude to what is to come. I think my summer is going to be quite slow if this week is any indication. It looks like the summer courses at Lexis Amsterdam or not going go through so that means a start date and end of September. Claudia is away until at least 1 June, and Lili the other one has nine hours left on a 12 hour package of which two are to be in person. My third English center client starts on 31 May and I’m a little worried because we have 11 classes left in the package and I’m not sure that we’ll be able to finish before I leave for Greece in August. My Dutch private client will go on hiatus for the summer as well. I will probably suggest that we do online lessons while I am in Greece as that will give me a source of income. I will likely continue with Karolina and the kids in China over the summer. My Lingueo client cancelled all of her slots with me so that was a bust.

Last Tuesday I had my first Class at the school in Amstelveen and it went pretty well. The owner of the company isn’t a teacher but his definitely picked up a few pointers since the last time I was in a classroom with him. We played three games and it took me about an hour to figure out who is the class clown, who needs extra help, and who can help me run the class when the conversation playground owner is not available. I’m impressed that I was able to figure it out within the first hour. I also discovered that to get the classes attention rapping on the whiteboard and saying “this is not my circus“ and having the kids respond “we are not your monkeys” works a treat. I enjoyed myself immensely, but it became more and more clear to me that would never make a good full-time school teacher. More adult classes with more regularity is definitely my jam. Still any experience in teaching is good and I would not say no to doing more of these after school teaching through game sessions, especially if they are more closely located to Amsterdam as the commute is both expensive and annoying. You basically travel three hours round-trip for an hour class.

In other news, Jasper and I went to a Middelburg in the province of Zealand this weekend. We have both agreed that these trips are quite hard to do without a car unless you stay in the city center. Our hotel was 3 km from the city center, about a 35 minute walk through suburbia. I was consistently reminded why I am a city person and refuse to live out in the sticks. Of course, Jasper’s running joke for the weekend was that if you won the lottery on Friday we would move to Middleburg. I find that if I can smile and nod and pretend that Jasper is always right lots of headaches are avoided. He can continue in his delusional state that winning the lottery is enough of a retirement plan, but I am American and don’t have the European safety net to count on. Middelburg is a lovely town, but vacationing in the time of Covid is surreal an a bit dystopian. We ate breakfast and dinner in our room which would have been fine except we also had to go pick it up ourselves, and not the most environmentally friendly what with everything individually wrapped. Here are some pictures of our trip:

Jasper is actually striking a candid pose in the the church photo. Can you spot him? I didn’t realize that I took a picture of him until I started posting them here. To me the church looks less like a church and more like the Bodleian library at Oxford.

In other news, the first of the quarterly MRIs came back clear: no new lesions and no change in the existing ones. I was quite happy with the good news but I do wish that this was MRI four of four and not one of four. Jasper claims that MRIs are fun. This is the first time that he has been walking next to me as I write my blog posts on the go and he’s contributing. I kind of wish he would stop. MRIs are not fun and while they are not this horrible terrible thing that people make them out to be, wearing wax earplugs and headphones and trying to listen to music while in the machine can prove to be a challenge. Because, while Jasper claims that you can go to sleep in an MRI, the reality is quite different there is no sleep to be had an MRI.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.

This week at Inkreadable, dear reader, really tested my mettle. Most of the time I can fairly easily adapt between levels. This includes subtle shifts in level like B1 To B2, but also more extreme shifts like B1 to C1. This week however, that proved a little bit more challenging then I had anticipated, and I felt that across all of my platforms through the week.

Initially, I had thought that my most difficult transition lessons would be for The English Center. At least, that’s how the first part of the week shaped up. I have two students with them and one is a very solid B2, and the other is off the charts good at English. Her understanding and ability to do the work is beyond the C level. That’s not to say that she doesn’t struggle a little bit, but in most of the exercises that we’ve been doing, she has gotten nearly everything right. I am very lucky that she is humorous and can handle my self-deprecating humor, as I got into our second lesson and told her flat out that she was my most challenging student and that I had to ask for help from even more experienced teachers than I was. She was able to see the humor and laughed right along with me which was great. But the fact remains that trying to find lessons that are challenging enough for Claudia is a challenge all its own. I have therefore been focusing on the academic lessons and using a site called English for Academic Purposes. That seems to be working fairly well but still seems to be quite easy. Since this is a writing class, I feel a bit guilty that we haven’t actually done very much writing in the lesson and she hasn’t given me any writing Samples of her own to take a look at. With Lily, my other English Center client, it’s not so much that finding lessons that are difficult. Rather, it is making sure that the lessons are topics that she finds interesting because she bores easily. I also find myself worried that I will be a little bit too academic for Lily and not academic enough for Claudia. But neither of them have complained to the English Center so I think I am OK thus far.

This past week is also a challenge over at VIPKid. I typically open Prime Prime Time on Saturdays, which means 12-3 PM CET. While I thought that the classes for Claudia are hard, they’re nothing compared to the VIPKid writing lessons. They are an hour long and you’re supposed to go over a piece of writing that is submitted by the student. The assignment for this kid was to write a mini biography. And he chose to write about a Track Star in China. The biggest problem with this was that he literally wrote a half a sentence that I had to then spend an hour editing as well as trying to draw him out and get him to talk about writing in general and reading this piece. It was quite literally like pulling teeth to try to get him to answer questions. I must’ve done something right however because on Sunday morning, I woke up to a five Apple review from his mom. I suspect but that is going to be someone that I see again and I’m not looking forward to it.

Yesterday was my penultimate lesson with Alaina and I was curiously hesitant to ask her about whether she wants to renew the package. She is heading to Paris for a few weeks starting this week and I’m not sure that she will be able to continue with English lessons. It’s a shame because I would love to continue with her. I suspect however the reason that she’s going to Paris will not allow her to block off time for an English lesson once a week. I think I will wait until next eek to ask, I have had a two week hiatus from The Dutch student that I see on Mondays as it has been both school vacation and May holiday. I am busy trying to craft questions to ask him about his vacation as he is typically Dutch and never really forthcoming about what he did on any of his vacations. It is a quandary.

As suggested by my title, the week has also been quite difficult in terms of writing. I simply didn’t have the mental space this week to be able to write my own stuff. I find myself only wishing to read other people’s stuff. Which seems like a waste of time when you’re online with your writing friends and you’re not doing any writing. Still the discipline of getting online and at least being there on a Thursday night is important in itself because it’s still connects me to writing. I was able to do a little bit better on Sunday but was not entirely able to concentrate that day either. While I did some writing on Sunday, I also stressed about it it because I should’ve been lesson planning while I was writing. The discipline of being a writer can be sometimes very difficult, and his week was no exception.

I also had an MRI this week and will have a consultation with the doctor on Thursday. It was unfortunate because I was an idiot and opened up slots for VIPKid on Thursday having forgotten that my consultation was in person. So I had to send an email to the doctor and ask him if he could be a telephone consult. Thankfully he agreed and I opened up the rest of Thursday with the exception of the hour when he supposed to be calling me. Also this week I discovered that my computer, which is barely a year old, is having technical issues. Actually, It’s a problem of hardware. It seems that one of the ports on my Dell no longer function. I found this out on Friday morning when I was setting up my computer to teach. The upshot is that I cannot power my computer, use my headphones, and use my cooling laptop stand at the same time. But this is why I bought the expensive care package and Dell came out to me on Monday. I took the precaution of letting Alena know that I might have to change our lesson for Monday because I’m not sure what time the technician will come out. It has truly been a pins and needles kind of week for me here at Inkreadable.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there’s more to come.

Happy Koningsdag Or Kings day, from the Netherlands! It’s a uniquely Dutch holiday celebrating the Kings birthday. His official birthday, that is. When the Netherlands had a queen, they also celebrated Queens Day on 27 April. The streets swarm with people wearing orange, and setting up stalls to sell random old stuff to people walking around. It is the nation’s biggest flea market. The last King’s day wasn’t much of an affair as we were all in lockdown. One year later and we are still in a lockdown. This year, it will not be possible to wander around Amsterdam looking at people hocking their wares on the sidewalks, in the parks, and sometimes even from a canal boat. One year, dear reader, I even saw someone selling not a pair of shoes but a single shoe. I wonder to this day, if he ever sold it.

Over at Inkreadable, dear reader, it’s been a week of lasts. I had my last Lingueo lesson with Delphine and my last (for now) lesson at TEC with a student there. She says she wants to take more lessons with TC, but is unsure whether she wants private or group classes. I was honest and told her that she would do fairly well in a group class and recommended that she take the fluency course. It’s not particularly business focused but rather is more of a speaking course and I think that would be good for her. Delphine and I have agreed to keep in touch and maybe we will schedule some Skype conversations on occasion. I also scheduled my lessons with the nearly native speaking financial Executive who wants help with writing reports and business communication. We Had our first lesson yesterday and I think it went all right. Though I spent the first half hour feeling like I had pitched t too low. I did spend the weekend doing some extra prep and talking to her previous teacher. All things being equal, I should be able to maintain a fairly flexible attitude. We will have to see what happens with her once I start teaching in Amstelveen.

Speaking of Amstelveen, I sent all of my information and signed the contract for The Conversation Playground mid-week last week. So now it’s a waiting game. We are going to begin on 11 May and there is still no word as to the time. I prefer, (and have my fingers crossed for) starting at 2:20 and not 3:20. 2:20 will allow me to get there on my own and get back from there without having to rely on the owner of the company for rides. But I’m a little bit conflicted, because if I do ask for rides home at least, I can then offer my English Center client more flexibility. I am leaning towards getting to the school on Tuesdays on my own and then accepting a ride home after the class is over. We will have to see how it all works out.

Over at rPeply, things got kind of interesting mid week last week as I had a booking for Friday, 23 April at 9 PM. I contacted the student who asked me for my Skype as they wanted to do their trial lesson on that platform. . The student proceeded to make me an offer on Skype. She claimed that she did not need the English lessons from Preply and that her work was paying for them. She then said that she and I could set up lessons that she would confirm on Preply and when I got paid I would give her half the money from her lessons. Needless to say, that was a hard no from me and I also reported her to the company. I called it a prank in the title for the sake of alliteration but really, it’s fraud. And in the EU if she was found out then\n I’d be on the hook too. Yeah, no thanks.

There is still no word from Lexis as to whether we’re going to start courses in June and September but I am kind of busy doing research and prepping for that as well. I hope that that does turn into something because then we’re talking about real money. And possibly no VIPKid which is the goal.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.

This week at Inkreadable, dear reader, started out pretty quiet and then ramped up to almost insane. While VIPKid remains the same, and with Lingueo wrapping up later this week, my schedule was going to get pretty empty. I still have my private clients but their packages are winding up and should finish sometime next month. I am not sure, or at least I cannot read, whether they’re going to renew. In any case, my private client will take the summer off which means six weeks. With me going to Greece in August it means that I won’t see him until mid September at the earliest. And while I think Alaina likes my lessons I’m not sure she wants to keep going. And it’s not yet the time to ask.

I have had a bunch of work from the English Center. One is a client who wants 10 lessons online and two lessons in person in Amstelveen, which I think the owner of the company is going to give her. Although when I talked to the student, she did say that she only wanted the in person lessons for a change of pace. If she wants to do them with me maybe I will head out there. I also have a second client with the company who has asked for 6 one hour lessons. We had our first lesson week before last on a Friday and two lessons on Tuesday and Friday last week. Our last three lessons are this week, we’ve already had one yesterday, we will have one today and we will have one on Friday. Instead of doing grammar, like I normally do, the student has tested at a C1 level and so I have been started using a lot of Linguahouse lessons with her. We also did a lesson on human resources and prepositions because she finds them confusing. I think the student will continue with me which will be great. I did however, make a mistake with The English Center. They offered me a client for 18 hours who is an executive and needs help with writing and the language of finance. All of which is fine except that they have waived their usual policy and have told the client that she can cancel with three hours notice with no penalty to her. And what that means for me is that I can’t charge her. Jasper rightly pointed out that the English Center should have offered compensation to the teacher for their flexibility. But of course, they did not say anything about that. I didn’t ask either. What’s more concerning to me is whether I’m going to be able to handle the timing of these 3 English Center clients, and the potential to teach for Lexis Amsterdam starting in June. But I will deal with that when I have to as it is not a sure thing by any means.

By far the most interesting events of the week was getting contacted by The Conversation Playground to confirm a teaching gig starting on 11 May and going through 7 July. I will be heading out to the middle of nowhere on Tuesday afternoons to teach English in the context of playing games. The pay is good and the owner of the company has offered to pick me up and drop me off. What they do is they have 12 kids between the ages of six and nine play games and speak English while doing it. The facilitator sets up a whiteboard where the kids can go and write the Dutch word that they don’t know in English but they are not allowed to speak Dutch for the whole hour. It’s an interesting concept, and there isn’t a lot of correction involved but I will be correcting three points that I hear through the games. I’m kind of excited by the possibility. It’s not something that I’ve ever done. I have gone to see how they conduct the lesson once. It was interesting. We will have to see if I’m up to the challenge as I haven’t facilitated a classroom of kids in years. And even then, I was teaching creative writing so there wasn’t a lot of classroom management. They were also English native speakers. It should be an interesting couple of months.

In other news, I’m headed next Monday for an MRI. It’s the first MRI to monitor my brain activity in three months. I will say that I have felt no changes and I’m not tripping or doing anything neurological that is weird. So I’m hopeful that there has been no change. Still no news on the cataract surgery and I’m kind of thinking that there won’t be for a little while. I hope it doesn’t conflict with my trip to Greece in August, because that will be difficult to try and change.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.

This week, dear reader, was a short one here at Inkreadable. I had decided to take the Easter weekend off, including Monday, ostensibly to take a break. But in the middle of last week, a chance conversation changed everything.

In my last post, I told you that I had been doing some editing work for a former student, which while unpaid, could have led to a paid commission from one of their classmates. That did not turn into anything, alas. Not only that but I did not hear from my student about the edits at all. Not even a thank you. I also did some editing for my friend Despina over at Lexus Amsterdam. As we are friends as well as colleagues of sorts she came over and we were talking about our trials and tribulations in the time of pandemic trying to teach our languages. I casually mentioned that I was surprised that she didn’t have any group lessons for English and apparently, it blew her mind. She had simply never thought of it. So in a back-and-forth that would extend for the whole week, we decided to start two different fluency courses and one course for business English. They are going to run in the summer over eight weeks And at the end of September when I am back from my travels in Greece. I am quite excited for the possibilities and have spent quite a lot of time looking at different books and how best to structure all three of them.

With my private clients off the schedule for Monday, I took the time to take a walk but also do more planning and plotting for the syllabus for the courses. That is in addition to my normal lesson planning for my private clients. I am quite pleased at least terms of scheduling. My Monday private client is taking the week off but Alena and I have switched the lesson to later today, and we were going to have the lesson outside but the weather has been uncooperative since yesterday. In fact, my iPhone weather app had been calling for snow for both yesterday and today. Needless to say there will be other lessons in the package where we can meet in person.

Over on the Preply platform, things have ground to a halt. My one and only student says she has Covid and so we have suspended lessons until she feels better. I am also trying not to be a cynic and am choosing to believe that she is telling the truth. After all, she has already paid for the lesson so why would she then not want to take them. My plan is to contact her in a couple of weeks so that I can figure out my own schedule. After all, if I’m not gonna be teaching her on Tuesdays or Thursdays I can be teaching someone else.

In VIPKid world, I am basically only teaching the students who ask for priority booking requests. I am not really getting any new students nor am I getting any trials. It seems to be an up-and-down kind of thing. A lot of my teacher colleagues on the European Facebook group that I run, do have more consistent bookings but have also noticed that there is an up and down quality to the bookings as of late.

Writingwise, things proceed well. I am attending the Sunday Write-Ins and the Thursday Write-Ins quite regularly. I have an interesting dilemma in terms of plotting because my brain is working quite a bit faster than my fingers can type. The ideas are coming fast and furious and I’m not quite sure how to handle all of that creativity. It’s actually quite a good problem to have. But I will say that I was rather annoyed at some of the members of my group who either could not figure out how to get in to the meeting on Saturday, even though I have never had any trouble, or compounded the drama by giving me grief. The short version is that a new member of the group wanted me to post the link to the meetup website, which I refuse to do because I don’t want that many people on Zoom. I did explain how to access the meetings form WhatsApp but that seemed to be too much for the person to understand so I gave in. I duly set up recurring meetings in Zoom and sent emails to the people who requested them. I was touched that a VIPKid teacher friend who is also in the group, but is in the states now was following the What’sApp drama and wrote me privately to offer caring and support as it is a lot of work to keep track of. Managing the differing personalities in the group can be quite a challenge.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.

Spring has sprung here in the Netherlands. Well, it actually sprang last week, but over the weekend we went forward an hour to daylight savings time and I always find  I get much happier and more positive the more daylight I have. The downside, which for most people ends up being an hour less sleep, is the opposite for me. My Sunday at 9 AM student started at 10 over this past weekend. So what that meant for me was that I could sleep for an extra hour. Of course, my body woke me up well before the time of teaching but then I can be lazy and not get out of bed.

The week brought a couple of surprises. In my last post, I mentioned that I was possibly doing some translation work for my friend Despina over at Lexis Amsterdam. I accepted the project and completed the first three web content texts that she sent me in about an hour. She did say that she would send me some more as she wrote more content. I was impressed by her English writing skills as I did not have to make that many corrections. A former TEC student contacted me about doing some editing for her first research paper for her classes. I accepted the work and will do that one for free. She also gave my name to a classmate of hers That commission will be charged at €30 an hour. That’s if it comes through. I suspect that they won’t want to pay money for editing. So very few people do.

Over on Preply, my one and only student no showed on Thursday. I waited 1/2 hour in the classroom. I also contacted her on WhatsApp as well as sending a message on the platform. In addition, I took the step of also emailing Preply support. They were not very helpful. I got a canned automated message about their cancellation policy. I have decided not to charge my student because it was her first offense. The funny thing is she never answered either on Preply or on WhatsApp and in fact, while it looks like my messages were delivered, the checks are double and gray which means that the student hasn’t seen them. I hope everything is OK with her. We have a lesson on Tuesday evening and Thursday afternoon so I hope she will attend those. But it leaves me a little bit frustrated and stressed out that this will become a pattern with her and impact her learning goals. After all you cannot improve if you do not attend class. Preply, unlike VIPKid, actually penalizes the teacher for a student no-show. This means that they hide your profile from potential students.

Over in VIPKid world, I had my last ever class with a favorite student. He has finished his package of lessons. His mom and I are friends on WeChat and he suggested that we have conversations via WeChat. I was so sad as I have been teaching him for the last three years. My private clients in China have asked that we slow down our lessons using the third book of National Geographic because the readings are too long. I think that I will try to expend them to four weeks a chapter which means more prep for me, but also means that it should take 20 months to get through the last two books in the series.

This week I also had the son of my private student on Wednesday. I decided to use the Book 21st century readings by National Geographic, which is a collaboration between the publishing company and Ted that makes English lessons based on Ted talks. I quickly found that this was a little too advanced for him and had to downgrade what I was doing. So we basically turned it into a conversation based on the lesson in the book and a bit of reading from the chapter but we didn’t watch the Ted talk. Additionally, I find that it’s really hard to teach a nine-year-old whose only interest is soccer. I hope but I haven’t made a mess  with this client that I will not be able to come back from.

I have six lessons left with Delphine over at Lingueo. I have found some amazing free lessons that have to do with art as the subject matter, and she seems to be enjoying it even if it’s a little difficult for her. I hope that I can find a few more of those lessons for her last few. It looks like we will be finished on 23 April.

Writing this week was actually quite productive. I was able to finish a chapter and start a new  I also think I see the light at the end of the tunnel for The Book of All Things.. After 10 years, I think it’s about time. But for me it was more about the journey than the destination. Still it’s nice to have an idea of where it’s going and how it will end. I’ve also noticed that the possibilities are open for multiple books because I don’t want to leave these characters just yet. What was supposed to be my trying to process my feelings about leaving Scotland at a time that I was hurting, turned into an odyssey of writing self discovery.

That’s all she wrote this Inkreadable in summer. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.

Happy first day of Spring to all of you! Spring in the Netherlands is full of flowers and people sitting on terraces drinking. But, of course not this year. The restrictions in the Netherlands continue and it looks like they will be made even stricter as our numbers are on the rise. With no vaccine in sight, I made the decision to use my credit from the US trip that I canceled a year ago to book a ticket for 25 August through 14 September this year. It’s my cousin’s son’s wedding as well as possibly my nephew’s christening, though I haven’t heard anything about that from my sister. Let’s hope that I get to take the trip. I am not looking forward to all the Covid tests in my future.

This week at Inkreadable brought all but one of my lessons online, and an extra lesson for my new client’s son. In essence, since I’ve already been paid for his Dad’s hours, I do not mind transferring the hour to the son. At least someone is making use of my services. The situation will change if they want lessons for the young man on his own. He, like Yves is nine and at about the same level. I am going to try the National Geographic 21st-century reading for him but if we find that too difficult then I will try and craft lessons for him that are more age-appropriate. It would be helpful if I could have a look at his English materials. Then I can align closer with what the school is teaching him.

The lessons with Alena are going well and she seems to be enjoying them and as they are early days the prep is easy as I’m going through mostly grammar. She is compliant with homework and gives me her homework every Tuesday and we go over at the following class. She is intuitive and asks really interesting questions. I love my adult students because they are so motivated to learn and they are genuinely happy to see you when you walk in the room. Or as the case may be, n screen. It’s a little bit more fun than my kids at VIPKid who are essentially being forced to take English lessons. It’s not that their attitudes are bad, in fact, some of them are really happy and interested in the lesson. But it gets very difficult when a kid wants to focus on something else. I am finding that with Greek as well. My Greek student he’s a great kid who is focused when he wants to be. But focus is difficult for him and I have had to learn to incorporate the things that he likes to do, like play with emoji ‘s, into the lesson.

My Polish student Karolina is going through changes of her own. She is moving from Warsaw to Krakow in the next couple of weeks and so we spent this weeks lesson with her talking about that move and the apartments that she has seen. We will go back to doing IELTS prep at the end of the month. Generally, I find IELTS fun to teach but I also find it challenging because I’m not sure where to find materials. I have a couple of good websites but I’m always looking for more stuff. I have taken to using the other standardized English language tests as material and applying the oil test prep and strategies to those. It seems to be working.

In other news, my friend Despina over at Lexis Amsterdam need some help translating her website into English. I am happy to do the work as I really like translation work and even offered to do it for free. She is a friend and I really don’t mind but she insists on paying me and that’s quite nice. I’ve also been contacted by Sander who also wants translation work for his website in a couple of months from Dutch into English. Both are very good exercises for me because they allow me to improve both my Greek and my Dutch.

Over the weekend, I got a call from the owner of the Conversation Playground who took the time of slow down and the pandemic to learn new skills in IT and has designed an escape room online for use in the classroom by teachers. Not just language but also any other subjects. It’s an interesting design and I was able to create questions and hints but had some significant critique because I found some of the navigational tools a little bit difficult. Still it was a good exercise for me and I never considered an escape room as a teaching tool for EFL but it seems like it could work. I did assure him that I would use the tool in my classrooms and that might be a good thing to try and do with my private students in China. I do like when there’s lots of possibilities.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.

The days here in Amsterdam are getting longer, and what that means here at Inkreadable, is more time to prepare for lessons, seeing friends, and a general uplifting of the mood. I had not spent a winter here in the Netherlands in its entirety, as we generally leave to go to the US in the beginning of December, so I had never experienced the shortest day of the year here. The winters here are tough, they are gray and cold and the nights feel very long. It brings me back a bit to my time in Scotland. I did not really like winter there either, as the days ended at 3 PM and didn’t start until 9 o’clock the next day.

This week at Inkreadable, started with my two new students and miracle of miracles I got one student on Preply, who booked 12 lessons with me. But I have not had any inquiries from anyone else and the three conversations that I was having with people turned into nothing. I wish that the company would allow teachers to book lessons when students express interest. At least, the trial lesson. Since you’re not being paid for it anyway, you should be in control at least  of booking the lesson so that the student doesn’t have to do it. Still I am hopeful that I will get more students, though I am continually annoyed by that Facebook group for Preply Teachers where everybody is posting their 18 hours a day of booked lessons. It is a known problem for me, as the teachers at VIPKid do the same thing. There are some teachers who always post their schedules that are fully booked, and that’s great for them, but that’s no longer my experience. To that end, I have decided to stop opening from 9 AM to 11:30 AM on Sunday. Instead, I am only going to open for one student who has to ask for the Sunday slot. I decided it wasn’t worth it for me to open 2 1/2 hours of lessons, then have a spate of 25 hour cancellations that will not fill short notice. Instead, I plan on using the time to write.

The plan is to write on Sundays from 10 AM to 1130 when I have to go teach Greek. I will, of course, keep my Sunday private clients so that still keeps me working from 11 to 2 but at least once my VIPKid student is done with his package, I won’t have to wake up before 10 o’clock in the morning on a Sunday. I’m finding that the writing sessions on Sunday and good for me as they let me connect with my characters on a day that is other than Thursday. Which is always good. That’s not to say that I won’t give up a Thursday for something interesting and fun, as I did this Thursday to go have dinner with friends in the neighborhood, but as I told them the writing is as much about my mental health and the connection with my characters, as it is about connecting with the Writers Group. I try not to flake out on them too often.

The lessons at Lingueo are ticking down to their inevitable end. My second student has his last two lessons this week. I will be sad to lose him as we get along quite well. I am hopeful that once the lockdown ends, we will stay in contact and Jasper and I can do a long weekend in Paris so that I can meet them, and as a bonus so that they can meet each other. I am not the only one suffering Lingueo loss, my friend Teresa, who is also a VIP teacher living in France, also hasn’t had any more students after her initial two students. I still have Delphine until the end of April at some point.

I am happy with the decision do not do VIPKid on Sunday. At some point of course, when we start meeting at WW in person, the Saturday means will allow me to take Saturday off as well. At least, that’s the plan, though I don’t know when that will start up again.

That’s all she wrote for this  Inkreadable Installment. But stay tuned. As always, there’s more to come.