Adversity and Obstacles Made Me a More Resourceful Teacher
Back in the late 1980´s when I started teaching English as a Foreign Language at different places: at a Primary school, at a private language school for children, teens and adults, all the materials we had were a coursebook, workbook and cassettes to practice listening comprehension. We also included film watching for listening and speaking practice. Those tapes would stop working in the tape recorder/player from time to time because they had been used too many times, or just by rewinding and fast forwarding them to find the right lesson made them unplayable in a short time.
Times changed so we started to use CDs, and later usb flashdrives or pendrives, as they are called here in Argentina.(I really haven´t found what the difference between the two words is). Definitely, my first close encounter with technology was when I began to teach in the US in 2001. Having an Apple computer in the classroom, free access to many computers in the school library and laptops in a cart which I could book in advance to take to my classroom to make my students surf the web and see what we, Argentinians actually look like, was like a dream! The fact that I could email anyone, anytime really helped me to adapt myself being away from relatives and friends in my home country. So, almost everyday, since I was teaching in a completely different environment from the one I was used to, I was not only amazed at the use of technology in the classes, but also at the type of organization and simplification of school life in many aspects.
Did all this advancement imply some training or rehearsing before each class in which I wanted to implement some of this revolutionary technological practice? It was a question of self-motivation, curiosity and self-assessment: I would sit at my desktop computer and start playing with the different tools to make, for example, my own school webpage where I included background tango music, filled with Argentine websites, maps, places to visit, and also homework, classwork, extra practice, and much more. It goes without saying that anything related to technology was not such a big surprise to my students, as it was for me. Through SchoolNotes the District provided every teacher the possibility to have her/his own webpage! Amazing! I added all I could, tango music in the background, links to argentinian websites in Spanish and English, apart from the required today´s activities, weekly planning and homework/follow up practice at home.
After all those years when my professional development happened to me almost accidentally every single day, the moment I landed in my former classroom in Argentina in 2010, the feeling of frustration and disappointment kept growing as time went by: it was not the school environment, or the unresponsive students, quite the opposite, students were fascinated to Tweet about World Peace Day (those that had internet in their personal phones), prepare lessons on segregation in the US, celebrate World Water Day or criticize the United Nations...they had a voice in classes.
However, keeping in touch with my former colleagues in the US, I realized technology was implemented very seriously in the classrooms no matter which one it was. I had experienced that myself: my ESOL students using Google Earth to locate their hometowns, or practicing pronunciation, studying Math, Science and Social Studies online. In 2011 in Argentina, Blackberry cellphones were already in the market so we were "Wow!! you have a Blackberry!". So, after checking how many of my students had a smartphone, I felt I had to do something new, innovative and creative: I could not sit still waiting for digital devices to be delivered to me: I had to look for a way to work with those phones my students had, although I did not have one myself. Soon after that, I decided to buy an LG cellphone with a built-in camera to take photos and record video: 2 gigs but not so good to connect to Internet. I NEEDED to innovate! I had to! I couldn´t accept I was in a classroom environment where books, cds and handouts were the only resources available. So what I did, was to start taking pictures and recording very bad quality videos of my students while they were working on projects.
Did all this advancement imply some training or rehearsing before each class in which I wanted to implement some of this revolutionary technological practice? It was a question of self-motivation, curiosity and self-assessment: I would sit at my desktop computer and start playing with the different tools to make, for example, my own school webpage where I included background tango music, filled with Argentine websites, maps, places to visit, and also homework, classwork, extra practice, and much more. It goes without saying that anything related to technology was not such a big surprise to my students, as it was for me.
After all those years when my professional development happened to me almost accidentally every single day, the moment I landed in my former classroom in Argentina in 2010, the feeling of frustration and disappointment kept growing as time went by. in touch with my former colleagues in the US, I realized technology was implemented very seriously in the classrooms no matter which one it was. I had experienced that myself: my ESL/ESOL students using Google Earth to locate their hometowns, or practicing pronunciation, studying Math, Science and Social Studies online. In 2011 in Argentina, Blackberry cellphones were already in the market so we were "Wow!! you have a Blackberry!". So, after checking how many of my students had a smartphone, I felt I had to do something new, innovative and creative: I could not sit still waiting for digital devices to be delivered to me: I had to look for a way to work with those phones my students had, although I did not have one myself. Soon after that, I decided to buy an LG cellphone with a built-in camera to take photos and record video: 2 gigs but not so good to connect to Internet. I NEEDED to innovate! I had to! I couldn´t accept I was in a classroom environment where books, cds and handouts were the only resources available. So what I did, was to start taking pictures and recording very bad quality videos of my students while they were working on projects.
