Interviews with Three New Bloggers for My Three Years of Blogging – Number One: Dinçer Demir

Dinçer Demir in Bartın, his hometown

December 10th is my third blog birthday! I decided to pay a tribute to three new bloggers, to celebrate my three years of blogging! First of the three, Dinçer Demir – an educator from Turkey, that I was fortunate to meet in person last weekend at the YTU 1st ELT Conference.

Dinçer blogs at: http://www.dincerdemir.com/

Vicky: Dinçer, thanks so much for accepting to give me this interview for the celebration of three new bloggers and the third birthday of my blog!

Dinçer: You are welcome Vicky. Actually I want to thank you because it is an honor for me to have an interview on the special anniversary of your blog.

Vicky: It’s an honour to have you on the blog. Can you tell us a few things about yourself and your work?

Dinçer: I am a 27-year-old teacher, who has been teaching for more than 5 years. I am from Turkey and I live and work in İstanbul.  I am teaching English to both young learners and teenagers. In addition to these, I have had experiences of teaching English for communication to adult learners.

Vicky: How did you decide to pursue a career in education?

Dinçer: At the very early stages of my education career, I was not so sure if I wanted to be an educator. During university, I started to discover myself and my skills and I thought that this was my job. Today I see that I was right. I feel like I was born to be an educator, because I enjoy teaching, I like being part of a changing process, I like learning. So I can easily say that I don’t work, I do my hobby.

Vicky: That is great! You teach primary school children. What do you enjoy the most working with these ages?

Dinçer: In my opinion, teaching young learners is more difficult than teaching adults. What makes a teacher tired is classroom management and keeping students engaged.  However, my experience shows that young learners learn easier and faster. As a teacher, you can be more motivated with them when you get results quickly.

Vicky: You are active both on Twitter and Facebook, connecting to many educators. How does this reflect in your work?

Presenting in İstanbul

Dinçer:  You are right. I am an active social media user. At the beginning of my social media life, I used to use it just to socialize. However, I use these tools to learn and share, especially Twitter. Thanks to Twitter, I have broadened my vision, I have realized different points of views, I have seen many best practices.  To sum up, it has changed my way of teaching and learning.

Vicky: There are several educators who would like to connect with other educators, but are a bit wary of social media. What would you advise them?

Dinçer:  It is impossible not to grant them right.  But every field may be a bit risky if it is not used accordingly. I want to highlight that especially Twitter (not Facebook, because it may include much private content) is a great tool to refresh themselves and enter into a huge sharing world. Maybe they can be more careful about who they follow and who follows them and they had better not share private information about themselves.

Vicky: Can you share one of the best moments in your teaching so far?

Dinçer’s students in the play, in the town of Şanlıurfa

Dinçer:  There are lots of them, of course. It is hard to choose. If I have to choose one, I prefer a theatre event in Şanlıurfa (in the south east of Turkey). I was doing my military service in Şanlıurfa as a teacher. I was teaching 4^th grade. The city is not one of the most developed cities of Turkey. But we, me and my students, managed to perform Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (in English) in spite of inadequate opportunities. Their effort was unforgettable for me.

Vicky: You are a new blogger with new and fresh ideas. What inspired you to enter the world of blogging?

Dinçer: My first serious attempt at e-learning was an online TESOL Certificate Course.  After I had completed the course, I liked e-learning. Afterwards, I have started to search about this and I have found lots of great inspiring blogs. So I have been a blog reader and follower for a long while. Finally I thought that I was ready to make a start on blogging and I did.

As long as you keep blogging, that means you keep learning. The idea of learning forever inspired me for this.

Vicky: Thank you so much for sharing your insights, Dinçer and I wish you all the best!

Dinçer: Happy for this, thanks a lot, dear Vicky.