I attended my first NZATE conference in 2001, the year before I decided to chuck in my job as a policy analyst and go to teachers' college. It was an experiment: I figured that if I could spend three days with a bunch of English teachers and enjoy it, then that was probably a good test of whether or not I would enjoy teaching English. I still think it was quite a good test, although I am probably a biased sample, having been brought up by two English teachers. (Yes, I did also go and hang out with some students!)
Today, 14 years later, I presented at NZATE conference for the first time ever, talking about teaching Shakespeare, the most fun part of my job. The title of the workshop (Shakespeare: Feel the fear and do it anyway!) refers to both students and teachers, as sometimes teachers too are a bit diffident about tackling Shakespeare, particularly with reluctant students. I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but I LOVE Shakespeare and decided to share some of the things I do in the hopes that others might pick up something that is worth trying.
I was a bit nervous, but I enjoyed running the workshop and hopefully the attendees got something from it. Presenting was itself a case of feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
A great first day, and having presented my workshop today I can relax and enjoy the rest of the conference. I'll post my workshop presentation tomorrow, it has been temporarily 'unshared' while the conference people organise the online resources.
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