Merry Christmas and may you live a long and happy life filled with goodwill and friendship.

 

Our FCE for Teachers

 

 and TKT YL courses have come to an end and I am really happy to have contributed to our colleagues´development by acting as a tutor. We are having our last gathering of the year tomorrow Saturday 6th, 2014 and we will be granting the first TKT YL Certificates in Peru to 12 of our teachers. This Certificate will give them more confidence in their teaching children practice and will contribute to their profesional development.

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you my Friends who accompany me every day and help me become a better person. Yesterday I read an article about the power of Union and I would like to share this extract with you.

 

"Everyone in our lives is a mirror reflecting back the parts we love and dislike about ourselves. If we have the courage to recognize our reflections in each other, we can grow through our partnerships. A partnership that offers both acceptance of who we are and an opportunity for personal transformation can be fertile ground for growing a healthy, lasting union. When we find this kind of partnership, we are more likely to want to keep it, invest in it, and nurture it.

Life is a collaborative effort. Much of what we do can be enhanced through partnership. Together we are stronger because our personal power is multiplied by two. Through partnership we experience the joys of working, living, and loving together."

 

Thanks very much for working, living and loving with me!!! 

We all live in a community in one way or another and we all have an opportunity to make it better in some way.

 

 

It’s easy to get caught up in our personal lives and forget that we have an obligation to be responsible members of our communities. For some of us,  it may need to take a moment to consider how to be more responsible for the communities in which we live. For those of us who live in large cities, we can start with our neighbourhoods. Anything we do on a small level will automatically ripple out into the larger system.

 

 

One approach to community responsibility is to consider what you have to offer and find ways to bring that into your community. Even a small open house in an apartment building can accomplish a lot in terms of making people feel more connected and comfortable with each other.  

 

Your particular vision, gifts, and strengths are part of what makes your community unique, so as you recognize them in yourself, feel free to offer them to those who live in your vicinity. Whether your offerings are visionary or practical, they are the very essence of community.

For more information visit dailyom.com

19th Britanico Annual Teachers´Convention

Today was a special day in my professional life because one of the learning/teaching circles in my career in education was closed. I was invited by a Publisher to represent them as guest speaker in the Britanico Annual Teachers´Convention.

Why is this so special to me besides being a speaker in such an important event? The fact that I was a student at Británico when I was a child and then a teacher at Britanico Lima for about 12 years when there were only three centres: Lima, San Isidro and Miraflores.

Britanico has been my alma mater for almost all my life and I feel at home whenever I visit their premises even if it has been modernized, there are lots of new teachers and I haven´t seen many of the people I knew for quite a long time. I feel proud of having been a student, a teacher and now a speaker. I had the chance to have lunch with Jeremy Harmer sitting opposite me and talk to him as if we were old friends! How lucky and proud of my teachers I felt! I remembered my DOTE (now DELTA) tutor: Mike Donovan and Pilar Ferreyros and Ita Valcárcel, I also remembered my classmates, most of them long-life friends and I thought how fortunate I was for being there, sharing and learning and being where I always wanted to be.

Thanks Macmillan and thanks Britanico for the opportunity of making one of my dreams come true.

 

FCE FOR TEACHERS

 

On August 9th we started an FCE course for teachers with a Diagnostic Test in order to know if the participants have the required level (Upper-intermediate or B2 according to the CEFR) and could also cope with the different skills required in the test papers.

 

The FCE qualification is the basic qualification a teacher of English should have. Why is this so?

Most of the world’s English teachers are not native speakers of English, but we all know that it is not necessary to have a nativelike command of a language in order to teach it well  . How much of a language does one need to know to be able to teach it effectively? Of course, we know that there are other factors that influence the effectiveness of our teaching but let´s try to answer the first question by thinking of the language-specific competencies  that a language teacher needs  These include the ability to do the following kinds of things:

• to comprehend texts accurately

• to provide good language models

• to maintain use of the target language in the classroom

• to maintain fluent use of the target language

• to give explanations and instructions in the target language

• to provide examples of words and gramatical structures and give accurate explanations (ex. of vocabulary and langauge points)

• to use appropriate classroom language

• to select target-language resources (e.g. newspapers, magazines, the Internet)

• to monitor his or her own speech and writing for accuracy

• to give correct feedback on learner language

• to provide input at an appropriate level of difficulty

• to provide language-enrichment experiences for learners

Learning how to carry out these aspects of a lesson fluently and comprehensively in English is an important dimension of teacher learning for those whose mother tongue is not English. As Jack C. Richards (2011) in Performance in Language Teaching  said, "there is a threshold proficiency level the teacher needs to have reached in the target language in order to be able to teach effectively in English". 

 

Teachers' day is a day that is celebrated to appreciate and honour teachers for their contribution to society as well as for imparting knowledge, guiding and shaping the minds and careers of students. In our country it is celebrated on July 6^th because that is when the first Male Teacher Training College (Escuela Normal de Varones) was founded by José de San Martín in 1822.

Teachers have an influencing role in the life of every student. They are like beacons of light, guiding us in the formative years of our life. What we learn from our teacher remains with us, throughout our life and if we are teachers, we have a tremendous responsibility towards our students.

 On this special occasion I would like to recall the teachers who helped me in shaping my life. My Biology teacher at school who woke up my curiosity for the unknown and taught me the importance of research; my teacher of English at Británico-at that time called ACPB- who was strict and disciplined and feared by many but loved by many more because with her “you really learned”. It was her- and it is a pity I do not remember her name now since she was my teacher during the summer holidays when I was still in primary school-who made me  believe I could learn and speak the language as well as she did.  Británico provided me with a role model- Pilar Ferreyros- and with long-life friends from whom I have learned a lot.

I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other profession and in my teaching career have been influenced by the following quote: “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers; but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” (Carl Jung)

I have not stopped being a student and as such I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. As a teacher, I am striving to become one of them.

Happy Teacher´s Day my dear colleagues!!!

Happy Father´s Day

Click here to see and hear the e-card

The United Nations Environment Programme announced that the theme of this year's World Environment Day will be small island developing states or "SIDS." Island nations around the world are particularly vulnerable to climate change, natural disasters and rising seas. However, they have also come up with some amazing solutions to cope with these problems.

World Environment Day is June 5, and this year aims to raise awareness about the impact of climate change on small islands states around the world. There's also much to be learned from these countries, which have overcome a number of environmental problems with only limited resources.

To all my friends and colleagues who are Moms and to the Moms of my friends and colleagues.

 

 

All the joy and passion you can envision can be yours right now, rather than in a future point in time.

The time we are blessed with is limited and tends to be used up all too quickly. How we utilize that time is consequently one of the most important decisions we make.

Yet it is far too easy to put off until tomorrow what we are dreaming of today. The hectic pace of modern existence affords us an easy out; we shelve our aspirations so we can cope more effectively with the challenges of the present, ostensibly to have more time and leisure to realize our purpose in the future.

Or we tell ourselves that we will chase our dreams someday once we have accomplished other lesser goals. In truth, it is our fear that keeps us from seeking fulfillment in the here and now—because we view failure as a possibility, our reasons for delaying our inevitable success seem sound and rational.

If we ask ourselves what we are really waiting for, however, we discover that there is no truly compelling reason why we should put off the pursuit of the dreams that sustain us.
(The Daily Om)

 

 

 

 

April 1st was the World Day of Education and I am still thinking of how this can be celebrated in any other way than providing education to all those who need it.

 

Authorities and governments claim that they know that Education is the way to grow as citizens and as countries but while they say this, the news show many incidents where corruption, greed and misunderstanding create situations that end up in violence, disease  and death.

 

It is so hard to solve so many problems at the same time!

 

However, if each of us, as individuals, try to  learn how to live and work in harmony, how to help each other and how to be thankful for what we have, we may find ourselves at ease and less prone to commit crimes and hurt others, I hope.

 

Education begins at home, with the values our parents and family pass on to us. At home we learn to trust, to help, to enjoy, to be considerate, to wait and at school we consolidate these skills and attitudes if our teachers show them by becoming role models of all this.

 

I believe we are all teachers, we all have children around us who look up to us and who may want to become like us. Therefore, it is good to try to be the best we can in everything we do. No matter if the outcome is not perfect, but we can rest assured that we did our best and that is what counts.

 

"If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a longing, last real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop- everything."

Happiness is the result of inner maturity. It depends on us alone, and requires patient work, carried out from day to day. Happiness must be built, and this requires time and effort. In the long term, happiness and unhappiness are therefore a way of being, or a life skill. (Matthieu Ricard.)

Today is Monday morning, a new week starts  today and I decide to make the most out of it. It is a sunny day, my beloved are all in good health, I stretch out and fix breakfast. I am about to enter my office but then I decide to water my garden before it gets too hot, I pet my dogs and then  share a coffee with a relative.

 

I start work  with the usual routine, check mails for about an hour and when I was at this, I  find a mail from a long-lost friend in Germany. I feel my heart flooded with this warm feeling I have whenever I hear from a friend I have not heard of for quite a while. How good to know she is doing fine, she lives in a caravan surrounded by the wind, flowers and birds. She is happy!!!!

 

After answering mails, I start the serious staff: prepare the sections of the Pronunciation course I am going to teach soon and delight at the idea of imagining the teacher trainees doing the different activities and sharing a good laugh together. I am happy !!!!!!!!!

Last week was certainly memorable. Not only because I finished running the three-day sessions on CLIL I had been assigned and whose summary you can find at mumariatefl.blogspot.com but also because I received a phone call from a Head hunter-Michael Page company-trying to recruit me for a start-up British company and another from a University in the North of the country which I visited in the year 2010. They wanted me as a profesor in their School of Translation and Interpretation.

I did not accept any of the posts because I am in a special position in my life where I want to take things slowly and enjoy every bit of it. I have already had my share of struggles so felt happy to know that I am still competitive in the EFL world and am in a privileged position of choosing what I want to do with my time.

 

An additional reason to be happy was that my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last week but my Mum has Alzheimer so she does not remember the date and my Dad died almost two years ago, so I paid homage to their wonderful lives together by lighting a candle and offering a prayer. However, if they had been with me they would have been really happy at this news and would probably felt that they had nothing to do with it disregarding that what I am now is because of them.

 

They did a terrific job raising us up, my brothers and I, considering that we were born in a shanty town, my Dad was a textile factory worker and my Mom could not even finish primary school. However, they were loving, dedicated and convinced that only education could take us wherever we wanted to be... and so it did. My brothers are American citizens, one works in education like me whereas the other works for a Stock Exchange company. We have all travelled extensively because of our Jobs. I have been in Europe, Asia, North America and have lived in Spain, England, Chile and the USA. We all have quiet but happy lives, keeping a low profile but enjoying the family and always taking care for each other.

 

Mum and Dad you certainly did an amazing job!!!. Love you lots.

Beginning and Ending

From January 20th to 31st I participated, as a tutor, in the Summer Course for Top Teachers of English, organized by Customized Training Services, the company I work for.

We tried really hard to offer teachers the chance to  exchange their experiences in areas such as Classroom Management, Teaching Pronunciation, Language for Teachers, Developing Communicative Competence and Supplementary material.

This experience was really interesting because it helped me understand the situations some of our colleagues have to experience on a daily basis along their teaching practice and how resourceful some of them are trying to overcome the problems they encounter.

Liliana, who took care of the Logistics, Emma, my peer tutor and good friend, and I have learned a lot from our colleagues and are really looking forward to meeting them again and supporting them in their pursue of their professional development.

Thanks very much our dear new friends. You can find their posts and a summary of their production at https://summerenglishcourse2014.blogspot.com

Nothing is permanent:

The sun and the moon rise and then set,

The bright, clear day is followed by the deep, dark night.

From hour to hour, everything changes.

 

from (Buddhist offerings 365 days)

"The gifts we are born with and those that we work to develop throughout our lives vary in form and function. Some we find use for every day while others are only useful in specific circumstances.

Yet many times we overlook opportunities to share our unique gifts with others. It may be fear of criticism that holds us back or the paralyzing weight of uncertainty.

Ultimately, we doubt that our innate talents and practiced skills can truly add value to others’ lives. But it is the world as a whole that benefits when we willingly share our gifts. Whether you have been blessed with the ability to awaken beautiful emotions in others through art or industry, or your aptitudes transmit more practical advantages, your gifts are a part of who you are.

As you make use of those gifts as best you can, be assured that your contribution to worldly well-being will not be overlooked."

(From the Daily Om)