I was born in Portugal, in the exact plot of land where I still live. At the age of eleven I was experiencing my third school system. Curiously, the first time ever that I went to school at age five was in London. Then came the Portuguese school system, where I finished fourth grade, the end of elementary school. Finally, I entered the American school system, which left a very strong imprint and defined my future.
I stopped studying in English at sixteen, the time when I re-entered the Portuguese system to finish high school and go on to university, where I studied English and German. All this in Lisbon in the late sixties.
I deciding on becoming a teacher, because I had always enjoyed tutoring friends. Teaching English was something I loved doing for 33 years. And even more so when I embraced the "brave new world" of new technologies in the 1997-98 school year. The first project I carried out with 7 volunteer students in after school hours was an email exchange with a group of 5th and 6th grade American students in Florida. Blended learning became a never-ending process until I retired in March 2008.
Joining the Webheads in Action in January 2002 proved to be a turning point in my career without which I would not be traveling to Yakutsk, Siberia, in a few days. However, I need to emphasize other events in my personal and professional life that contributed to this very special opportunity. Joining TESOL in 2001, going to the TESOL Conference in St. Louis that year and meeting Christine Meloni, who introduced me to Larissa Olesova at TESOL 2004 in Long Beach, California. That year I had launched the Becoming a Webhead online workshop with my dear friend Dafne Gonzalez. BaW has been running non-stop since then and Larissa co-moderated Week 2 this year. In March 2008 Larissa was at a presentation of mine in the TESOL Conference in New York and invited me to do a videoconference about that blog for the Yakutsk TESOL Summer Workshop that year. Our collaboration has never stopped and here I am today, Mar 14, leaving for Yakutsk on Mar 18.
Yakutsk, here I come!!! :-)
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