APrIR Newsletters: 2016 and back 5/13 Dec 2013 | Page 4

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Many of our members attended the Conference either as speakers or
delegates. We asked them to share their impressions on the event, but
what with our hectic lives most found it impossible to contribute. We are thus
doubly grateful to Rita Zeinstejer, who says
Particularly concerned as I am about what is to me one of the crucial
challenges in today’s education –motivating learners--, I was struck by Pam
Wright’s session on School Leadership for Success. Her burning enthusiasm to
share the bottom line of her talk “a school almost never exceeds the quality of its leadership”
was highly contagious, proving once again that teachers’ zest can spur their students into
action and enjoyment. But successful school leaders will hoist the quality of education within
their realm provided they can adapt to current educational thinking.

and to Florencia Viale, who submitted the full report which was one of the requirements of
the APrIR Scholarship.
The Fabulous Feeling of Faaping
by Florencia Viale
One cannot possible talk about conferencing without quoting David Lodge and his
accurate depiction of attitudes and behaviours of teachers worldwide under these
circumstances:
“The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows
the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversions of travel while
appearing to be austerily bent on self-improvement. […] But with this excuse you journey to
new and interesting places, meet new and interesting people, and form new and interesting
relationships with them […] and yet, at the end of it all, return home with an enhanced
reputation for seriousness of mind. Today´s conferees have an additional advantage over the
pilgrims of old in that their expenses are paid, or at least subsided subsidized, by the
institution to which they belong…” (Lodge, Small World, 1984)

This year the “pilgrimage” proved much more
convenient for those EFL teachers who eagerly and readily
get on the road in their quest for professional development
and - why not – the opportunity to strengthen bonds.
Puerto Madero glowed over the three days during which
the conference took place, and the inspiring view that we
could all get from the rooms where the different
presentations were held did nothing but inspire us in turn
to grasp other colleagues’ experiences with all our senses
as well as revisit our own through different spectacles.
It was a matter of choosing routes that would invariably lead to the very roots of
our teaching practices and lives.
I had the opportunity to hear several presenters praising the role of cultural
awareness as “an eye-opening experience.” The Independent [1] referred to London as the
“new European melting pot” arguing that it “has always been a cosmopolitan city, home to
wave after wave of immigrants who in time have become Londoners, providing the mix that
arguably makes London the most cosmopolitan city in the world.” Borrowing the metaphor,