To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Julia Stephen with Virginia on her lap 1884
By Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (1852-1911) - Smith College Libraries, Leslie Stephen Photo Album, Public Domain, Link

Reading Virginia Woolf's famous book  To the Lighthouse  is still one of the most fascinating  reading experiences I have ever had.

I remember reading the book and focussing on the mother's loving care for her family and how the main protagonist of this  story must have given us some information and similarities with the writer's true family story.  This was one of the many books  I had chosen to study for my English Literature  exams when I was  finishing my university years . It was so nice reading it  and  I loved  Mrs Ramsay and the way she took care of the house and the children.

#VirginiaWoolf's great novel "To the Lighthouse" was published #onthisday 1927. The first edition ran to 3000 copies - this is one of them. pic.twitter.com/wZlKUR34ua

— The London Library (@TheLondonLib) 5 maggio 2018

Listen to this beautiful radio drama based on the novel  and imagine how she must have worked on the  characterization of each member of the family. It is said that the family she described was based on her life and the  children who were in the writer's family. 
What is really great is the way she  creates situations and we get into the beauty of their minds.

What follows are some interesting documents which I have  found online and which I feel can help us read and understand the way of writing which was the peculiarity of  the writer  V.Woolf.







Woolf wrote novels but she worked on the magic power of words and images. I loved the beautiful image of the Lighthouse and I thought that it had a great meaning for the child and the mother who wanted him to be pleased and to experience the  lighthouse.

If you have some free hours and you would like to  read  I think that this book is still one of the best ones I  should spend some time on.


References  and Links

https://www.bl.uk/works/to-the-lighthouse


https://youtu.be/M2zE-Trmfd8

Learning about the Past : History seen through Images

You might think that  social networks are not useful but  for educators they can provide a lot of interesting  sources.

Here is  a coloured image  depicting  a burning  Ghetto  in the  Second World War - it is a  document that tells us about the atrocities of  what happened in the  areas  which were occupied by  the Germans .  We can teach about the past also by using  images and  by using   resources which we cannot find  in books.   I feel that  this  a  different  approach to help our  students   think and reflect on  what happened .

Those who survived and their message for us today

An interesting  video reminding us what  happened  a long time ago in Poland.

75 years ago, the most famous act of armed Jewish resistance during the Holocaust occurred in the Warsaw ghetto. 93-years-old Simcha Rotem is the last remaining fighter of the #WarsawGhettoUprising still with us. Today, this is his lesson for the future generations. pic.twitter.com/XwTBBP1jEv

— (((WJC))) (@WorldJewishCong) 19 aprile 2018

Simcha   Rotem has  a lesson for us  today-  it is  worth sharing :

" Among the  two -legged animals there are  those who are worthy  and those who are not worthy of being called   human  beings"


   

Liberation of the Concentration Camp Bergen-Belsen on 15th April 1945

15th April 1945

Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp was liberated.  Today I was online and I came across the Tweet which the Auschwitz Museum had just  posted to remind us about it.The images and the events that occured there  must be remembered by us.  Thousands of people  died there because of the belief - most of them were  Jews  while other people   fighting against the Nazis. 

15 April 1945 | Soldiers of the British 11th Armoured Division liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. At least 52,000 of the total of around 120,000 prisoners died in the camp. https://t.co/cqLqkFalRM pic.twitter.com/jEWgfPY9pf

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) 15 aprile 2018

I visited this camp many years ago, we could not see much about  the  camp but we learnt about the stories of men and women who had  died there.  Among the people who were killed  or died  there we have the famous  young girl whose Diary is still read  today:  Anne Frank.

 I was visitng the camp with my students and an old  Italian man who  had been  imprisoned in Germany and he was  presenting the voice of a person who had survived- many are not living anymore. We learnt how  the war had changed  people and violence had shaped the lives of the many who were living in concentration camps.

Let's remember and  let's work together to make this  world  become a better world today.

Link to the concentration camp:

https://bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de/en/history/theconcentrationcamp1943-1945/

Blendspace My lessons about the Victorian Age

For my fourth year  class in a  Liceo Artistico  I had to design some lessons and tasks about the Victorian Age. Since we have just  11-12 lessons in class  till the end of the school year I decided to create some virtual lesson containers online where my students could work on their own and  learn about the age of Queen Victoria and one of the most important  writers of the time- C.Dickens.

I have often used Google Slides to present my content, this time I chose   Blendspace.
The Platform has enabled me to design a lesson plan with lots of  direct links to videos and materials online that deal with the topic I am going to do in class. I will guide them to read and watch  some documents dealing with the time we are studying and  I would like them to reflect on the many  contrasts of the time in which  Dickens  lived. Most of the tasks will be done from home, I need to rely on the students' working at home as we  have poor internet  connection and now at school we have no whiteboards with  internet connections.





The next step will be to help them speak about the topic and find links among the many events that took place in the long time in which the Queen ruled. It is also possible to add quizzes in the online platform. I will think about  some guided compositions or  quizzes to help the students  study and present what they have learnt.


I  think that  Blendplace is a  nice and versatile tool. If you want to add more documents you might  need to pay for some but when  teachers have access to documents that are shared and  are free , we can easily build a good lesson  for learners.

The gallery offers some nice lessons for   many   school subjects. It is worth trying  them.

Useful links

https://www.tes.com/lessons

https://www.tes.com/lessons/gallery

http://testeach-blog.tes.com/

Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day #YomHashoah begins at sundown. A time to remember and mourn. Millions of faceless victims alongside family members we never knew. Find someone's story, read it and remember them. Remember them all. #HolocaustRemembranceDay #neverforget #fightantisemitism pic.twitter.com/qtyByzCsax

— David Collier (@mishtal) 11 aprile 2018

It is time to remember but it is also time to think that  what is happening now after the end of  WWII is something we should  be ashamed of.

It is a tragedy that is happening  in many countries like  Syria and where children are suffering because  adults and  politicians do not  care.


 

The inspiring story of a 7-year-old Syrian refugee and his love for school. pic.twitter.com/BaDzmYC5fr

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) 2 aprile 2018

Let's hope we can  make this  a better  world for all the children who are  suffering.  Let's stop wars .

Well-being and Teaching

Image credit by ---=XEON=--- - https://www.panoramio.com/photo/83467135, CC BY 3.0, Link
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ADVENTURE_BANK_-_panoramio.jpg#/media/File:ADVENTURE_BANK_-_panoramio.jpg

 Right now I am following a webinar about  the importance of learning about the mind and how we can support our learners.

SimpleK12 has just presented a great  webinar tonight : it had to do with well-being and  teaching.
I am sharing their great  tips and resources :  https://www.sjbrooks-young.org/five-simple-stress-relief-strategies-for-educators-april-17-2018/

At school we have to remember that our teaching  can have a negative impact on learners, sometimes  learners can become  engaged in spite of our bad way of working and interacting or they can make us feel   under pressure. Our reaction is often the worst , especially when students do not  cooperate.

It is important to learn how to deal with stressful situations and to find a way for  keeping on working while forgetting the moments in which we had to cope with such difficulties.

The last years have been hard in terms of expectations and more and more families rely on teachers who are also helpers.  Some people find this is the hardest task. You need to be a teacher, a listener, a facilitator and this is  sometimes too much. You end your day home without forgetting what has happened at school.

Well-being is  a must for any worker.  Educators who work with teenagers and also kids need to work on themselves to become resiliant and continue working in the best ways, in  spite of the difficulties they have faced or are expected to face.

Here is the repository with most of the resources which I will have to check later this year since like many other teachers I often feel overwhelmed with the many issues I have to cope with.

Click here to open this binder in a new window.