I wonder, sometimes, why some of my students seem to be under the impression that, although I have been teaching them all year, I in fact came down with the last shower of rain.

One of my terminally late students wandered in, as usual, after the lesson had started with an armful of shopping bags from Primark. When I asked her why she was late, she simply announced 'the bus'. I couldn't help wondering why our students seem to believe that the buses are so very unreliable that they are the panacea of excuses. In my experience the problem, 9 times out of 10, isn't the bus but the fact that the student gets on it too late to arrive when they are supposed to.

But anyway.

We've been studying communication- I am extremely nervous as our seminar presentation is coming up- and I have as a result been wondering what my clothes say about me. I always try to be smart, but not too smart as that might alienate the students. I wonder if it works?

Then there's my body language. Ever since I learned that the 'thumbs up' is extremely rude in some countries, I've been self-conscious about using it- for some reason, I often do when someone does something well. It's a good non-verbal praise cue for learners with very low levels of English. But I don't want to unwittingly offend anyone. I'm going to talk about the cultural issues surrounding non-verbal communication as my seminar presentation. I've found lots of evidence of the problems it can cause, and hope also to talk about how we can teach our students about proxemics and gestures, as it's a citizenship issue. It's relevant to my teaching, and I hope it will be interesting to the rest of the group. 10 minutes sounds like a lot to most people, I think, but I know how quickly it can go- and how slowly. Hopefully it will be the former.

Where does one get good grammar-joint oil? It's been a while since I did grammar with a class- mainly because we're approaching exam time, and if they don't know it by now, they never will, thus we do revision but not learning the new stuff.

As a result, I was somewhat rusty on that bit when I had to teach it in an observed class today. Fortunately the rest of the class was fine, so the observation still went OK.

I seem to be a bit better about observations now. Maybe that's because we've got the Communication Seminar coming up in a couple of weeks, and not only are we being filmed, but our supervisors have been invited to come and watch.

I'm SURE they can't have done this last year- a friend of mine did this course last year and she would have said something.

It's quite comforting to realise that although I've added a lot more to my teaching from the course- the things I consider when planning a lesson are more detailed, for example- my CELTA training is still very relevant.

For example, we have been thinking about communication, and how we make sure the student understands what we meant them to. One of the main techniques I was taught in CELTA was how to ask Concept Check Questions and Instruction Check Questions- how to make sure the students understand what you are talking about, and what they have to do. I think perhaps that some aspects of teacher training are a bit easier for me because of the subject that I teach- communication is a key part of everything we do. We have to think about everything we say, have to choose resources very carefully, have to think about how and when we use ICT etc, all because we have to make sure that our students, whose first language is not English, will be able to use what we give them.

Teaching can at times feel like Tartarus. Specifically, Sisyphus. You struggle and struggle to get the students higher up the steep mountain that is learning- especially learning English- and when you think they've got to the top of the molehill you're trying to reach the summit of, they roll right back down to the bottom and you have to try again.

Today is not one of those days. Today I've had the joy of the 'aahhhh' of realisation, and it hasn't been followed by my discovering that though they think they've understood something, they've got it totally wrong. The weaker students have persevered and it has paid off wonderfully- a student who could barely use a mouse at the start of the year is quietly and happily putting together a Powerpoint presentation about her family. She's got the hang of what to write on the slides- basic facts not lots of detail- and is using the title and text boxes. It's very satisfying.

Which is nice, on my birthday.

Also, the lady who came into my class on Wednesday? Apparently it's a compliment that she's got to come to my classes, because she's had a couple of bad observations and is shadowing people for best practice. Very flattering, I just hope that seeing me will actually be a positive thing...

Sometimes it's hard to be a teacher...

Trying to keep a straight face when one of your students presents you with the following answer to the question "Where is the Gaza Strip?"

"Now on show at the Gaza."

So my manager comes to me this morning and announces that I've got someone coming in to my class this afternoon. And every Wednesday afternoon for the next month.

She wasn't exactly clear about why they were coming, but mentioned something vague about the person having a group of students to teach next week, and how I had to tell her about the group.

She arrived (15 minutes late), stayed for the whole lesson, at the end of which I'd had an hour of feeling uncomfortable and discombobulated and was none the wiser as to why she was coming into my class.

The class in question is ostensibly IT, but they have 2 IT classes, and the one I do with them tends to be an extension of what they've done the lesson before. Not exactly thrill-a-minute ICT, but most of them only use the basics of a computer, plus at Entry 2 that's what we cover. And now I feel like I've got the sword of Damocles over my head, because I don't like being watched in a lesson, and I have no idea what kind of observation this was. Also, the person who came in said she was 'shadowing' me, but I hadn't been asked whether I would be willing to be shadowed, I just had a month's worth of discomfort sprung on me.

And I have no idea what to do about it.