In September 2010, as a 36-year old university graduate, I started teaching English at a secondary school, but very soon I understood that I would not get far without any fundamental motivation. Searching the internet for projects I came across eTwinning and soon after registering on the website I found my first project partner. And now, 4 years later, I cannot imagine my work as an educator without eTwinning.
Because I grew up in the old regime I could only dream of travelling abroad. Thanks to eTwinning, over the past four years I have managed to make my youth dream come 100% true for my students by finding friends for them in a foreign country and travelling to see them. The tools available on eTwinning Desktop made it easy. Three years ago, I and Simonetta from Italy, whom I found through contact list based on the similarity of preferences, devised a project called Storytellers, which by the way was awarded European quality label and which culminated in our visit to the school in Bergamo.
The year before last year we placed the bar higher. The situation required native speakers, whom we found after some time with the help of Desktop partner finding tools and equipped with experience from Italy we later invited 16 Englishmen. The exchange visit project could not have been more successful and even today I remember the touching hugs and tears when saying goodbye, or the words of a former ninth grader Marek, who asserted that in four days with the Englishmen he had learned more than in four years in school.
A participant of an international eTwinning seminar in Le Mans, 2012
Last year our school managed to get a Comenius project grant. Again we found our partners using the eTwinning tools. And although the original Turkish coordinator really let us down at very last moment while we virtually without sleep had put down the whole project on paper in 5 days, we managed to involve some reliable partners from former eTwinning projects and everything turned out fine! We are obliged to undertake 24 mobilities in two years but we, however, did 47 journeys in the first year of the project! Financed from EU funds our students travelled to Madrid, Budapest or Stavanger in Norway and two weeks from now they are going to Normandy.
For me eTwinning is like a family. It understands me more than some colleagues at work, who ask me sceptically: “What’s in it for you?” It takes up our time but we gladly sacrifice it, because we invest it into something timeless, from which we will benefit later. In the education system in Slovakia it is common to be given reasons why something is not possible or cannot be done. You feel like your hands are tied; you want to leave the profession and feel you have things under control. And then you get a message from the NSS in Žilina, which literally catapults you from your chair, saying that you have been selected to attend a seminar abroad and named teacher of the month!
For me eTwinning is an endless source of ideas and possibilities. All you need to do is click through a few awarded projects and you immediately find lots of inspiration and get to know a whole range of tools to present your project or final outcome. Last but not least, thanks to the eTwinning seminars, which I attended in Bratislava and LeMans, France I met like-minded people, who like to stand out from the crowd and do not regret investing their time and energy for something EXTRA, which sparks curiosity in pupils and offers them unusual space for self-realization. These meetings full of discussions and exchange of information were extremely motivating and energizing and brought me to another dimension. My students knew I would return with precious contacts and soon introduce them to their new friends.
Currently I work as a part-time English teacher at the Primary and Nursery School of H. Gavlovič. My fifth and sixth graders have not undertaken any journeys abroad under our Comenius project because they are still too young. Since they know me as a teacher who does projects, they addressed me already on the first day of school asking me, if there was anything they could participate in even if they had to pay for it. And although my net monthly pay is less than 300€, you tell me, if you could resist such popularity.
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