Tuesday, 3rd November

After our intense 3-week programme in Chichester University, we are finally approaching the second and most interesting part of our training course. During the following weeks we will have the opportunity of witnessing how English schools work, accompanying students in their everyday life and shadowing the job of British teachers in a real classroom environment. This is an extraordinary privilege for us, and an excellent way to learn new teaching strategies and techniques. Taking into account how thoroughly English teachers plan their sessions, and considering the wide variety of activities, exercises and dynamics that they usually put into practice, I think this is a wonderful opportunity for us to learn how to improve our own performance when we go back to our own Spanish schools.
During the following weeks, I will be attached to Bishop Luffa School in Chichester, which has an excellent reputation as an outstanding education centre. I was shocked by the extraordinary evaluation of the school in its last ofsted report. Students have excellent results in their national tests and most of them pass their GCSEs and A levels with very good marks. Every student seems to be taken care for in a very individual and affectionate way. The school is also well known for its strong links with the local community and for its interest in fostering a sense of brotherhood and cohesion among all its members.
According to the ofsted report, teachers who work at Bishop Luffa School are skilled, vocational, committed professionals who offer their students an excellent education and who have received exceptional praise from their inspectors. Considering the difficult challenges they have to face, I find that having such a good reputation is a clear indicator of their remarkable teaching expertise and proficiency. I wish I could be such a good teacher myself, so I am feeling really lucky for having this unique opportunity of visiting their school. I hope that during these three weeks I will be able to learn a lot from them. There are so many different strands in which my own teaching could be improved that I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of work I will have to do when I go back to Spain. I am interested in getting to know how they plan their lessons, how they structure the pace and rhythm of the sessions, how they design the beginning and the end of the class, how they assess their students' academic progress, how they monitor if every student is learning, how they deal with the amount of paperwork that teaching and learning involves… But above all I am looking forward to learn how to change my own approach to education, which I feel that is overly centred in the teacher's role. My general impression is that at Bishop Luffa School, students – and not teachers – are placed in the centre of the learning process. This is the kind of educational strategy I am keen on implementing in my own classes, and I am confident that the best way learn how to do it is making the most of this exceptional opportunity of witnessing with an open and critical mind how this educational approach can be effectively put into practice.