Wednesday, November 21, 2012

#4 My first job as an English teacher


Today I'm really happy to say that I'm going to work as an English teacher from January on! 

I was in an interview yesterday, recommended by my cousin, who has a friend that is opening an English School in GrĂ cia, (Barcelona) and it went absolutely perfect! I was a little bit nervous because I could only speak in English during the interview and I wasn't sure if I could have so much fluency as talking in Spanish or Catalan. 

I had to present myself and my experience with kids, taking to account that in the new job I will be responsible of a group of ten 1 and 2 year-old kids. After exposing my ideas on early years education I was asked about the kind of activities that I thought I could do with little children. I answered that in my opinion the most important thing is not to prepare activities but to prepare the space thoroughly. It has to be a safe room with a lot of different materials (to touch, smell, look, hear and even taste) that allow children explore and interact with them and with each other. So my idea is that kids play freely, chosing in each moment in which corner they want to be and during how long they want to stay in the same one. My job will consist in creating these learning oportunities and also guiding kids in their personal learning processes. 

Although most of the time the group will be moving and playing in a free way, I think that it's also necessary to start introducing some routines in the schedule (such as eating breakfast, washing their hands, going to the wc, listening to tales, singing a song...) and this is the moment where English language gets high relevance, the moment where the teacher, in this case me, using different technics to get children's attention, introduces new words and expressions, remarking them so many times as possible, to make kids memorize them. With 1 and 2 year old children one can start teaching the colors, the numbers, the animals, the parts of the body...Althought they will not start speaking English fluently (they won't speak Catalan neither anyway and everyday will be hearing their mother language at home), this knowledge will remain in their minds and will help them during the coming years to recognize and learn new vocabulary/expressions and to feel more comfortable talking in this foreign language. 

My interviewers where really convinced by my ideas and happy to see my enthusiasm with the project so, after almost one hour of conversation, they told me that the job was mine. I can't wait to start planning, designing the room and choosing the materials (furniture, toys, books, sensorial games,...) in it. I will work 3 and a half hours everyday day, speaking only in English and as the only adult reference for those 10 kids. It's a big challenge for me and I'm really excited about it!


Monday, November 5, 2012

#3 Being an English Teacher in the 21st Century

Times have changed and that's evident. So have children and so must we, teachers, adapting ourselves and our practice to the new reality. Just as an example, let me show you this video of a 20 months old girl in her first contact with her father’s IPad. 




Awesome, isn’t it?

As a future Pre-School teacher, I know that in one or two years I will be facing 25 digital natives in one class and that’s not easy at all. I will have to attend not only to their individual skills, needs and interests, but also to the influence of new technologies on them. Society changes constantly: its references, values and habits. Nowadays our society is submerged in the digital culture, characterized by the appearance of new ways of communication and fast evolution of everything that surrounds us and our students. Consequently we have to learn about the digital resources that we can use in class, be habitually recycling our methodology, adapting it to the new era and to children’s motivations, that surely will go hand in hand with technology. 

I think that the incorporation of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and multimedia resources in the School curriculum it's absolutely necessary, not only seen as an isolated subjects, but as a set of skills that lead children to participate effectively in their social and cultural context.

Focusing in Pre-School, I consider that ICT have many applications and possibilities for students of this stage and of course should be incorporated into all curricular areas in order to improve the overall development of children. They are a profitablel resource for both, teacher and learner, because it allows to introduce contents in a more attractive way, but above all, because it brings reality into the classroom.