At the end of every school year I always assay and reappraise my educational targets and my teaching strategy.
Questions like
- “Did I achieve my educational goal in relation to the curriculum?”
- “Was a specific project successful as to its original purpose?”
- “Were all language skills covered equally?”
- “Did this or that work for my students?”
- “Did this or that work for me?”
keep turning in my mind and I feel like a farmer who is harvesting her crops. And if there aren’t adequate answers to the above questions I am searching for new “fertilizers” or “seeding” techniques. How? Trying to rethink and reorganize my projects and their target, getting trained in new apps, strategize a more effective connection between the curriculum and the syllabus.
In the field, there are a lot of elements I need to handle and some factors work against me: time, boredom, lack of technological resources, unexpected factors.
First and foremost, because I’m interested in the social emotional development of my students, I contemplate if my students felt accepted, secure and comfortable enough to express themselves in my classes. What skills do I need to improve to foster their expressiveness? Had I created the fertile conditions for a rapport to bloom? Am I emotionally available and approachable? What kind of assessment could measure the rapport I’m building with my students?
Given the hugs, the drawings, the little gifts, the parent-teacher conferences, the looks and the delight tone they pronounced my name I could easily answer yes. But I know that I missed some. Not every student comes ready to be taught a foreign language. Different social backgrounds, lack of stimuli. Not every student comes open to be taught. Private foreign language schools have robbed us of the thrill and the purpose of foreign language learning. And to this battle, I’m all alone. I need to fight an obsolete mindset which relates foreign language teaching only to certificates.
But learning a foreign language means a lot more. A foreign language offers you a different point of view in life and therefore a different perspective. It broadens the spectrum and the horizon of our thought, makes us realize that difference is all that we come to this world for and learning communication codes is the only way to bridge the gaps.
As a teacher I am the cultural focal point and the representative of the foreign language I teach. I need to feel that my mission has got the time, the space and the respect of the state, of students, of parents, of society to be flourished and accomplished. But I will keep fighting my battles until something shifts.
So this school year, numerically speaking, I have managed to complete 5-7 units out of the 10 suggested ones for the four grades I teach. I created the related revision material and tests for all of them. 8 projects have been developed and only celebrations crafts have been confected. I am not satisfied with what my recap looks like. I need to be more inventive and resourceful. I need to be more supported in my educational work. Then my recap would look like a cup of joy!
And from that cup cheers for a nice summer!
What does YOUR recap-cup look like?
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