My reflection

My work background.

I am a History, Geography and Art History teacher in a secondary school. My students are pre-university and the majority of my lessons are going to be checked in a final exam (Selectivity). I teach my matters through English because we have a multilingual project in our school.

One of the main problems we face is the lack of time: our programs are very long and we must see them completely, what leaves little time for other kind of projects. 

Having said that, I am going to present my answers to the questions presented in our task. 

What do I want to improve?

I would like to improve my ability to make students take part in a more active part in the lessons. It is a pity that when one tries to do something different students answers are so different that it is not always possible to develop the activity initially planned. It is not easy to find different ways of working in the subject without devoting to them a time sometimes we don´t count with so, if someone does not do the part of the activity they must do, the normal speed of the program suffers.

I would like them to have the opportunity of working in some of the areas with students of other countries, in order to check things or to learn about their cultural and artistic background but it is not easy to find people of the same age and interest to work with.

What needs have I detected?

One of the main problems is that given that in these levels all teachers face similar matters with time, it is not easy to find someone to work with and to share the work load and the school hours devoted to this.

We are even considering that in case of students being interested, and taking into account that we offer some courses to be taught as a complementary activity, we will offer the possibility of joining in these projects, for instance, in e-twinning, in one of those workshops.

What projects have I found that might help me?

I was checking e-twinning projects that have received an award and, to my surprise, they don´t look to be too difficult, the only matter is how to arrange the coordination with other schools.

Sometimes, at least in my case, when we think of these projects perhaps we think about more ambitious things but with fewer cooperation in the development of the activities so we would need a change of heart in order to begin with this new challenge.