A participant of an international eTwinning seminar in Antwerp in 2014
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Marcela Šterbáková,
Nursery School
Juhoslovanská Košice
I have been an English teacher since 1997 and I have worked at various education levels, such as pre-school, and primary and secondary levels. I am lucky to have fallen in love with my profession and I enjoyed teaching in every school, where I have worked. I have made friends and I have had colleagues and pupils, who contact me even today.
As an English teacher I have always known how to study and use resources and inspiration in foreign languages. However, I have often been left alone with my ideas and innovations, because ..... “Why something new? Things are the best the way they have always been.”
When I discovered an international school portal called eTwinning two years ago, at first I joined “Creative classroom” group and just followed their issues, ideas and discussions. Although I was a passive member I gained a lot of interesting stimuli.
Later I started to participate in Creative classroom discussions and activities and I signed up for an on-line eTwinning course to learn how to use all eTwinning tools and all those excellent things I had found in eTwinning. Last but not least I found teachers in positions similar to mine to have discussions and conversations in English and to compare pupil portfolios and their level of English across Europe.
Soon afterwards I participated in an international eTwinning seminar in Belgium, where the words of one teacher in a discussion caught my attention: “...teachers are like ducks; they all quack and splash about in water, but only some of them take off the ground....., just like some teachers, who despite disfavour of their colleagues or superiors follow their visions, pursue their goals, are creative and search for new methods and forms of work with pupils.” I found this comparison with ducks unexpected on the one hand but refreshing and cute on the other.
During the seminar in Antwerp I found a lot of like-minded teachers, creative projects and new possibilities. Apart from that I communicated in English for three days and I discovered the true meaning of “multiculturalism”.
The enthusiasm I found at this eTwinning seminar has not left me since. I have found partners for my eTwinning projects in six different EU countries, one of them an eTwinning ambassador in Bulgaria, with whom we developed a beautiful project “Journey under the rainbow” dealing with folklore in nursery schools.
In April we submitted our project, following a Call for submission of grant applications for 2014 under Key Action 2 – Strategic partnerships in education and training (KA2), SAAIC – National Erasmus+ agency and currently we are waiting for approval. For all of us in Spain, Slovakia, Poland and Greece it would be an excellent opportunity to learn together with children creatively in an interesting way about traditions and cultures of our partners’ countries and present our beautiful customs and history.
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