As the dandelion seed twirls away into the blurry world,
another flower readies itself to be born.
This is a joint website of two English-language teachers in Austria. We brainstormed a long time on what to call the site and eventually settled on “BLUR” (a portmanteau of the first two letters of our names–URBL proved too hard to pronounce, so the order is merely for pronunciation’s sake). As fortuitous as the portmanteau is, how is “BLUR” relevant to teaching English?
Part of our jobs as educators is engaging with students and peers in order to learn more about the world (in a broader sense) and also more about learning English (in a more narrow sense). This engagement can often blur the lines of how we conceptualize ourselves, our worldview, our beliefs, and our actions. We both strive to empower students to blur the lines of what society may have rigidly taught and forced on them and to draw more compassionate lines that define a more compassionate world. A blurry world might at first seem like one in which rules (even grammatical ones!) have been thrown out the window (ah, idioms!)–in reality, a world too sharply focused can constrain its inhabitants by unbending rules or mores. Through blurry vision may we see new ways of being, of thinking, of speaking, of doing!
Check out our individual biographical pages by clicking on our initials below,
and use the menus on the right to navigate through the site.