ORGANIZED INITIATIVE

Quick reflection for today… What we expect from our students is totally different to what we are able to do!
The other day I came out of class (as a student) and I kept thinking about how loud and unorganized the class had been. Not because of the teacher´s fault but because of us, students. And we are all teachers too.
Many times we find ourselves thinking about why our students can´t be quiet while we talk, work silently or organize themselves in a better way. Yet, the class that made me think of writing this post is made up of 16 adult teachers who are studying a masters degree.
The purpose was pretty simple: ¨organize yourselves to create a wiki and write a story following these steps¨. If you take into account that I consider myself a positive person, maybe 20% read the instructions before starting to discuss, 30% listened to others before starting to work individually, 20% respected each other´s turn and most probably none of us really knew how to proceed as a group. I see myself in all of the excluding percentages, of course.
So, what is it that I get out of this experience? What is it that we expect from our students but we can´t control?

Excitement, eagerness, willingness, initiative. And from my point of view, they should not be controlled. Such feelings must be organized, but not cut short. This is where we got lost.
Last Friday, amidst frustration and disorganization, a leader suddenly came up, stopped all of us and asked for attention. This was ORGANIZED INITIATIVE. And suddenly the project started to take form and be great. Afterwards, we had a clear working scheme, distributed roles and a final objective. Although teamwork levels were still different, we managed to organize initiative and work as a team. I really think the final product was creative, coherent and beautiful. Thanks to initiative and excitement, of course… but thanks to organization too!

When your mind is hungry.

This is my mind right here. There is a moment when you feel a lack of knowledge to support your experience and this is where he is at right now. Fridge: empty. A feeling of emptiness that I am willing to get rid of. 

I have been a Spanish immersion and second language teacher for 7 years now. I had the pleasure to work with different models of language teaching: immersion situations, CLIL classrooms and 2nd language acquisition. I used several resources that I had learnt from my peers or that I had read about from articles or searching online. Teacher training that happened too fast and were just too short. 

So I guess I was need an ¨self¨ gift: a gap academic year to acquire more knowledge and reflect on my short experience. 

Hopefully, this experience will turn into wisdom rather than knowledge. A colleague of mine made it clear: knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables; wisdom is knowing not to put them in a fruit salad (quoting Miles Kington).
So welcome to my blog everybody! I hope that what I talk about helps you in your process of becoming an internationally minded teacher. My plan is to share post with contents related to:
- International education philosophies.
- International education resources and tasks. 
- Points of view and reflecting ideas from peers, education celebrities and myself. 
- Language acquisition resources in the International minded classroom (since it is my field of work). 
And lastly, being a Spanish native, I hope you can cope with my English and excuse it from time to time! Some posts in Spanish might come along as well. 
Welcome to the INTERNATIONAL MINDED TEACHER!
Don´t forget to comment or propose ideas, I am always willing to learn more from you!