Monday, 23rd November

Today we received the visit of Toñi Fernández Yubero, who is the main coordinator of our training programme in the Comunidad de Madrid Regional Ministry of Education. She was eager to know the particulars of the course from us, so we had a meeting in the afternoon where we had the opportunity to share our impressions and suggestions about the programme with her. Most teachers said that they found the experience both fruitful and very interesting. However, there were also some teachers who considered that the first weeks at Chichester University had been somewhat confusing and stressful. The great variety of different learning strands, the amount of information that was given to us and the considerable effort that we invested in doing our tasks after classes made some of us feel a bit overwhelmed. The attachment experience at schools was, generally speaking, much more satisfactory, as most of us consider that observing how English teachers give their classes is an exceptional and very useful experience. Many members of the group also had the opportunity of teaching, making this experience one of the most interesting and valuable parts of our training course.

In order to make this training programme even better in the future, we gave Toñi some ideas and suggestions. Some people considered that it would be great if a certain amount of time could be allocated to give us the opportunity of sharing our good experiences, as in the group there are some outstanding teachers who could show us some of the activities and techniques that they successfully use with their students. Other people explained that, even though getting to know how English teachers prepare and give their classes is quite interesting, putting this educational approach into practice could be a rather challenging experience in Spain, especially for those of us who are used to a more traditional teaching style. If possible, it would be interesting to devote some time in the training programme to prepare some kind of scaffolding strategy that could help us to cover this gap, in order to make this transition between old-fashioned and modern teaching approaches easier to implement.