Pedro Delgado, Sara González, Ruth Esteban and Diego Melgosa (4ºA) interviewed a teacher that took part in the project OBSERVA ACTION.
First we asked her about her personal life and her personal experiences;
She told us her name was Julia and that she was from León but that nowadays she lived in Palencia. She is an English teacher of Trinidad Arroyo high school,where she teaches students of 1ºESO and 3ºESO.
She explained us that she had gone to Salamanca university and that she had studied a translation and interpretation degree. She had studied a Science Baccalaureate in Juan del Enzima school, but she had decided to study English because around ten years before, she had met French children, but she couldn’t communicate with them so she didn’t want to be blind (she literally said that). In that moment she understood that she needed a tool to communicate with the others, the English. She said she had travelled to the UK, Ireland and the United States.When she was a child she didn’t know she was going to be a teacher, she liked English but she didn’t see it as her job. Nowadays she loves her job. She told us that English is very important to communicate, to join people. Sometimes we think that other people are very far from us only for the reason that we don’t speak the same language.
She declared that she loves working with teenagers. She has met people from a very different culture, for example she made a Vietnamese friend.
Then we asked her some interesting and deep questions. We inquired what English was for her, and she answered us with an amazing affirmation. She said that English was an open window, an opportunity, a bridge between cultures. We also asked her about the best thing she had learnt in this project, and she told us that she had learnt to love her work, all the expert teachers she has known love their job.She has been staying in the USA during 3 months as an exchange student. She’s really happy with her job, she wouldn’t change it. She had a lot of jobs while she was in Portugal. She lived during 4 years in Portugal where she was a Spanish teacher. This was the first time she worked as a teacher.
Then we asked her about the project;
We asked her what the name of the project was and what its objective was, she told us the name of the project was OBSERVA ACTION.
It was about getting in touch with other teachers that wanted to share their knowledge about teaching English or other languages.
She also told us that the project had advantages for her students because she learned new and probably better teaching techniques to teach them.She said that this project was very common in the United States. She told us that the best part of the project was getting in touch with other teachers to search experiences.
The project’s main objective is to interchange experience with other teachers. They do this going to other classes so they see how other teachers teach. The program is 3 months long.
At the beginning of the program (February) all the teachers that participate in the program went to Valladolid, in a training session. There they met the other teachers. She didn’t choose this high school, the centres were selected by a raffle.
She commented us that there were 2 observants and 2 expert teachers here in Palencia, because this was an experimental project. This project doesn’t consist of an exchange of teachers, the observants go to another teacher’s classes but not vice versa, there is not feedback. She told us that she hasn’t had any bad experiences, all were good. She told us that one of the best things of the project is that all the teachers love their jobs.
She said that travelling around the world is a beautiful experience and a great opportunity. She had travelled to the United Kingdom, Ireland and the USA as a tourist and also to improve her English. She can speak four languages: French, Portuguese, English and Spanish.
We also asked her about ways to learn a language. She told us that the best way was to make an exchange with another country, because it is a nurturing experience in which you will meet new people and you will learn important things about other cultures. An exchange makes you grow as a person and helps you to become a more open-minded individual. It teaches you to respect each other whatever its religion, its nationality or its colour of skin.
She told us that a useful technique to improve pronunciation was to listen how native people speak and repeat the words as much as possible.
Finally, we said to her goodbye and we took a photo with her. It was a very interesting interview and we learnt a lot of things.
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| Reporters Ruth, Diego, Sara and Pedro with teacher Julia. |
