Emilio Tenti Fanfani in Escobar

   Last Thursday, Emilio Tenti Fanfani came to Escobar and gave a seminar on many of the topics he usually writes about in his books.  At first, he started by saying what the features of an effective speaker should be. Then, he talked about different problems that affect Education. Finally, he decided to give people the opportunity to ask him questions, express new ideas and even expose in what points they disagreed with him.

   His ideas in the seminar were exposed  in a very comprehensible style. He suggested among other tips, that both teachers and future ones should do the same when they were, for example, delivering a lesson since otherwise it would not be productive for our students and the enjoyment of our job.

   He also talked about the different problems that affect public Education. He included among them the fact that secondary students have not acquired much knowledge and skills when they finish the last year of school. He said that many of them could hardly understand paragraphs or get main ideas from them. This would be a clear obstacle if they ever intended, for example, to continue studying at university.

   Finally, when the public had the chance to ask him questions, he proposed many ideas such as how to motivate students to learn. He talked about how respect for the differences could be used in order to introduce new topics and help learners have a positive attitude towards what may otherwise be rejected by them.

   The seminar was enjoyable and worth listening since it both helped students revise the ideas they had read about the previous years and it also gave new ideas about how to manage motivation in the classroom.

Can our world be changed from the classroom?

A Reflection

   Changing the world and having happier people may depend on the  inner motivation of each of us. It is widely known that we tend to do that we are more interested in and maybe that we dream of mostly. However, there is a point in which we stop trying and situations appear to continue forever. Then we may ask ourselves why we have this kind of reality we see everyday. Maybe we, as teachers, may have the chance to influence what our students will decide to do in the future and thus they may do some of the changes which would benefit not only them but also the rest of us.

   Something which motivates me again when I feel things are going wrong and feel frustrated, is to think  about what are those changes I would like to get in my life. Then, my imagination begins to show me images of  what a better life would be like. I will make a list of them and I get ideas such as "I would like to enjoy more when I am at work". Then, I ask myself how could I achieve that and my mind starts thinking about possible solutions, or strategies,  which I could apply in order to overcome those obstacles I experience when I at work. The next stage will be to apply and evaluate the results and see how well things went, bearing in mind that I may fail or succeed in what I wanted to do but also remembering that I should keep trying.

   That is a well-known process about how to create ideas and get changes in your life. Maybe, we could devote some lessons in which our students have to deal with problems and dreams as topics.  In order to reactivate their motivation we may ask them what their needs are, or what it is the dream that they had but think of as impossible to achieve. We could also show them images of better lives, or videos about what many common people achieved starting from very hard situations. After that, we could ask them to write ideas about how they could achieve those changes or what steps they should follow in order to get nearer to their dreams. Maybe, we could ask them to write reflections to hand in about how good the results were.

   Having a better and happier world may be a matter of getting the habit of starting to think again, planning, applying, evaluating and never giving up. However, it may not be the only way. It would positive if we as teachers could share ideas about how to improve things and also apply them.