Interaction with students

I went through a period of a lot of anxiety. But my concern for the students was such that I think I managed to control my anxiety a little through the concern I had with them and, therefore, I think I tried to convey some security, sometimes even playing with situations a little. And there is an issue here that has to do with proximity, meeting them at their homes. Well, on the one hand, I felt that some students were excessively informal, the fact that the classes arrived in their private space led to some students taking them too informally.

Although there is this inconvenience that they face the situation in a too informal way, I also think that there was some closeness of mine in this sense and I was a little more informal in certain situations. Because, for example, I talked about some aspects of Portuguese culture [to foreign students] and at the time I was at my house in Alentejo and I did something that I would obviously never do in a normal context: I showed it with the camera, because I have a lot of objects, for example embroideries from Nisa, pottery with the Alentejo paintings and I showed them many things from my own house to show them handicraft objects and this, for example, was something I did a little bit to give them that feeling of security and to play a little bit with the context. I told them: “Look, I'm already here in my house, I'll show you because you don't know these things!” And many didn't!”

Regarding anxiety, I think it helped them to relax a lot and it also helped me so there were situations in this case much more in which I showed more of myself and I think this gave the students well-being.