I stay in touch with some of my students from the last academic year who went back home across countries.
It’s nice to hear about how they’ve managed to continue to study at home. We discuss useful books and how they study in their online modules. One student told me that the pandemic situation is slowly getting better in Italy.
During February and March, I was feeling excessive stress in teaching, on top of the Covid situation and the approaching deadline of my thesis. It was the very first time that I expressed how I felt – concerns, fears and desire to receive more guidance – to my manager. She told me that “You’ve reached a point where you can consider students’ perspectives better.” I then need to try to “think together with students rather than simply exchanging questions and answers in class”. My manager and I had a three-hour meeting to go through all the session plans and materials I created, and she gave me feedback on them.
One student sent me a beautiful email, saying:
“I would like to express my greatest gratitude for your teaching and the passion put into doing so. There is a lot of magic and beauty in it. Our classes have opened up a whole new world for me.”
Students’ words always motivate me. My struggle turned out to be a very important step in working towards improvement.