Guest Post

[Glitterfy.com - *Glitter Words*]

The news just broadcast more cuts in salaries and the buzz word is crisis. Besides all this, the loads of paper work and the hours spent at school seem to burn all the necessary strength to face our misbehaved students and manage to involve them in learning. 
This past academic year I felt my job seemed to be dreadful routine. I needed to get some new motivation and that’s why I applied for “ Language and Methodology Refresher (Secondary /Adult)”. I asked APPI to advise me about the best colleges and courses, they suggested BELL in Cambridge. In April my application was approved and on 14th July I left my home at 3 am. Leaving my kids, being the only Portuguese teacher in the campus was a great challenge for me. I must confess I felt a bit anxious although I love travelling and making new friends. 
At 4 pm I was at Homerton College, in my bedroom. As my students would say: “Oh my God”! everything was new, the place, the people... at 7 o’clock the welcome event - the first person I met was a Brazilian teacher and we immediately started to speak English. It seems so strange, our mother tongue is Portuguese and we were speaking English, but why were we there? To improve our English, so? Let’s speak English! Since that moment, that was the only language I used. During this event we met many teachers form different countries not only in Europe but in Asia and South America. 
This was just the beginning of two great weeks of work as well as exchange of ideas, culture and knowledge. 
On Monday morning the first breakfast was in the “Harry Potter” hall. It seemed that I was a character of the film, I was a student in an English college. My dream as a kid (studying in England) had come true. 
At 9 am we met our tutor and the 12 teachers of the Methodology and – refresher- During the mornings, we were with the tutor learning new words, doing activities concerning the four skills and the different intelligences, developing new ideas for our future lessons. In the afternoon, we attended a variety of workshops either on cultural issues or practical ideas for classes. There were also plenary sessions and cultural events. In all these moments we could meet other teachers of other courses and share some more ideas.
In the evenings, after all the cultural events I had time to read my new books and the tutors’ suggestions. 
In the weekend we could visit London and Oxford, visit museums, colleges and do some shopping, of course. 
However, the days flew and on Saturday, 27th July, I had to come back. OMG... I felt I didn’t want to come back to reality. These two weeks were incredibly inspiring and motivating. I still feel a desire to read more, search more about new ideas for my lessons. 
This course was really important to change my way of seeing my job and to change the way I was working. I felt like a machine doing things automatically just because they had to be done, without much motivation. Now I feel the strength to face a new school year with a different attitude. My imagination has woken up. 
All I must say is: My dear friends, don’t deny yourselves the chance to do such a course, your students deserve it. Do it for yourselves and for your students. A course of this kind can be the turning point in your job now! So do it!

Isabel Breda

Agrupamento Escolas da Guia