Continuous training for teachers: a personal option (CLASS ENTRY 3)

Talking from experience, the changing of century has produced a reflection in different fields of knowledge. And this reflection has driven to think about others ways to do marketing, different ways to work, to govern, to communicate, to educate (to teach and to learn). Practitioners of several matters have thought in alternative ways to solve new questions.

In order to give solutions to new problems in education system, practitioners of teaching have reflected on the learning process, for instance. In the last half of 20th century, experts share us new relevant information about learning and thinking process, the human brain operation or how it works in adolescent brain like Bloom's taxonomy about thinking skills levels. All of these recent approaches have contributed to develop new education theories focused on solving new situations.

In Spain, I know singular teachers that are interested in pedagogical topics. I do not know them personally but the Internet is a good way to meet them. It is logical to think that an engaged teacher with his practice work, is also interested in new technologies of information and communication. And that is true talking from experience. Most of them I meet in Twitter are engaged teachers with education system. In this sense, channels of communication through social network as Twitter or LinkedIn, for instance, could be an excelent platform to relate with others teachers who are motivated in learning and improve their learning about how to teach better.

In my view, in the world of social networks, as a motivated teacher, you could inform others about news or events about education or about your specialized matter. Engaged teachers, in general, are those share their opinions, articles, their arguments on their blogs or their tweets, with other people that are interested in read it.

Basically, to stay in contact with the new knowledge or next events about your interest, you have to follow people, groups or institutions that talk about common interests. In general, you can find out references about education events through hashtags #. For instance, you can meet information about the next conference "to get your secondary school pupils reading for pleasure" on Friday 20th of March trough the hashtag #libchat.

In other words, it is important to have a Personal Learning Entourage (PLE) to continuous learning training because in Spain is a personal option and the Internet and TICs are the owner way to achieve an entourage where find out information about our interest matters through experts or others engaged teachers. The technologies platforms as a personal blogs or social networks as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Groups or web sites like Edutopia, TES Connect, Educación 3.0, E-Learning Heroes, between others, are virtual places where you could meet clues about where to go to improve our knowledge.

In short, everything said above is encouraged by oneself. That is because the Government in Spain have not promoted this kind of mechanisms of continuous learning for teachers. Therefore, we have to engage and motivate ourselves. And that we need to do.

Learning linguistic skills (CLASS ENTRY 2)

If you were not limited by the demands of the national/regional curriculum, what would you say is the most important thing you would teach your students about your subject (in a CLIL context)? How would you assess their learning?

In that case, I would know about my students and their learning process.  On the other hand, I would explain my strategies to help them to learn. We could choose the better path to walk along Literature, together. We could build a journey between readings and  plays, together. We could discover others type of communication through words, together too.

My ideal subject would be one that students learn to learn about their learning process throught content of History and Literature. Firstly, I should to show them how I assess their learning outcomes and which are our learning target. I would show them with videos, digital posters or other kind of audiovisual tools to communicate them what we want to learn and through what we are going to learn. Probably I use a poster or imap (conceptual map) that all could see it every day and we won't forget what our learning target is.

Secondly, I would talk them about what they need to express in words their thoughts. We start to know the tools of writing (textual genres) and then we start with practical activities through the content.

Thirdly, I would submit a project about different literary itineraries from which they could choose to do. I would use the methodology of Guadalupe Jover whose goal is to connect the inside library of adolecents with the big collective human library.

Guadalupe Jover, Taller: Itinerarios posibles para la educación literaria en la adolescencia from AELE Asociación Española de Lectura y Escritura

On the other hand, we would planning the work in groups and classroom blogs. And then, we will learn while we walk together into the universe of words and books. At the same time, I ought to create a templates and frameworks to help them to self-assess and to correct or continue the learning process.

Finally, we would have a debate about the methodology of the subject and make a critical reflection about our learning process through each lesson.

In my opinion, this have been a first approach about a new way to learn linguistic skills through content of History and Literature. In other words, I would plan this before and my students will assess my plan. Because it should be satisfactory and motivating for them. If not, is not useful.

Talking from experience, if adolescent don't control the process they loose the motivation and this is clue for their autonomous learning. As far as I am concerned, they should have rubrics about how they work diary to pass the subject and what they have to do at the end of the lesson or the term.

In short, learners (teenagers or not) should know the goals, the tools, the process and the evaluation system with rubrics or 'can do statements' than explain at least the roles of that new way to learn.