Reflections (GEP 1)

Dori Ortiz

When we started the GEP program last October, we decided to create a blog to make the dissemination of it to the rest of the school community.  In the introduction to our blog, back in October, we affirmed that: “We start this GEP 1 with lots of illusion and responsibility”. Now, that we have almost finished it, we can definitely argue that we still hold the same illusion towards GEP and the great results we got from it, keep us eager to take the same or even more responsibility in the following GEP courses. In other words, we would be thrilled, after this experience, to teach other subjects in English, now more than ever.

The main goal of this GEP was improving the linguistic multilingual competence of our pupils increasing the use of the English in other subjects. It has been amazing to see how GEP 1 has given us the opportunity to get in touch with new tendencies of English learning. Our trainers have been great. I want to thank Anabel Borràs and Mònica López for their enthusiastic way of guiding us during this first year.

Sometimes teachers need an excuse to change our way of understanding teaching. In my case, I had already used some new technologies in my lessons, mostly thanks to some International projects where my school has participated, but this time I have discovered a lot of new resources. As teachers, we should never stop learning. It was certainly rewarding to see how our students really enjoyed the learning process while having fun at the same time.

One of the aspects I would like to highlight is the use of Google apps for Education. Now, after and thanks to our GEP project, all of my pupils in C. Superior have their own Roureda's e-mail account. I have always wanted to try it out but GEP has given me the final motivation to jump into it. Our pupils have started using Google Classroom, and we have asked them to work with some different ICT tools like Kahoot, Quizlet or Padlet to learn about the Respiratory System in English.

Therefore and to sum up, this GEP has really been very positive for the pupils, the teachers and for our entire school community. My colleague, Irene Molina, is a hard worker and it has been very easy and enriching to work with her. We have had all the support of the management school team, the rest of the teachers and the parents.

And for all these reasons, “We, more or less finish this GEP 1, with the same illusion and responsibility we had when we started it and with the clear idea to increase the time to learn in English in other subjects”.

Irene Molina

I feel that everyone who is involved in GEP 1 is doing something great: we try to improve education, which is (or would be), one of the main goals for our society.

That is the main reason to be proud and appreciate the opportunity of learning current educational tendencies at the same time we put them into practice in our school, so we can see how it works to get results.

I would like to thank those who made possible this project in any moment, from the directives of the Department of Education to the driving forces, including trainers of GEP 1, the staff of our school and specially my colleague Dori Ortiz, without her this work would not be possible: sometimes life gives you the opportunity of meeting amazing people with whom you have an special connection. In this case, all the hard work that this project requires has been enjoyable due to our good agreement and cooperation.

All the community is important in this sense. But the most important thing to me is too see how students are learning and having fun as well. In fact, it was one of my “fears” that they would not feel so motivated in an English workshop about science or arts and crafts. Surprisingly, they are happy with that, they know that it is a different way to learn English compared to ordinary lessons. It’s rewarding to see that as a teacher!

On the whole, I think this is only a start and I am looking forward to continuing GEP 2 with big projects in my school. As an English teacher, I obviously think that this foreign language is essential to all our citizens, and this is a very positive experience.