Did I become a better teacher because I am a Scout?
Yesterday Scouts from all over the world celebrated the Founder’s day, Sir Baden Powell´s anniversary, the man that created the Scouts youth organization. This was the starting point for this blog article, as being a scout helped a lot to be the person that I am today.
I’ve been studying English since I was 10, in multiple contexts, academic, professional, traveling, teaching. I’ve started to teach English in private classes right after finishing college and in the last decade I’ve realized that teaching is what makes me happy. So, after 20 years dealing with customers, suppliers, brokers, freight forwarders I’ve decided to move towards another direction.
I’ve done different academic training to learn the pedagogy but honestly what really gave me the experience, the know-how, to become a teacher, was being a scout.
Almost everyone thinks that the scouts are a group of boys and girls dressing funny, that sell cookies. Well, is much more than that, I would define it as a life concept.
I’ve been working with the scout movement for 10 years, first as a mother and from 2014 as a volunteer. I work with groups of young boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 14. And boy, I’ve been learning with them as much as I’ve been teaching them.
It’s amazing what I’ve been growing after becoming a scout, as a mother, as a friend, as a teacher as a human being.
And from this experience I’ve gathered all that I’ve needed to become a (better) teacher, not speaking of academic knowledge, but speaking of pedagogy and teaching technique, of the know-how that is needed in class.
Outside, in the field, we teach our kids to enjoy life, to share, to learn important concepts, to be autonomous, to protect the nature, to respect the others. The theoretical concepts are behind all our activities, and we transfer that knowledge training in the field. And this is what bears in my mind when I am teaching, whether in a classroom or in an online class, whether they are kids, teenagers or adults, my students learn what I am transmitting in a way that they enjoy, they feel that is important for their lives, they understand the purpose of what they are learning and how to use it in real life. The practice that I put in place in the field is what I put in place in class, never forgetting the structures, grammar, vocabulary that I want them to know after class.
Oxinity is the perfect piece to fit the puzzle, to the academic and practical knowledge, in class I have the technology adapted to my role and to my students. The app has been designed in a practical way, assuming what the students need to know in the field and how they should use all the contents learned in class.
I am a proud scout and a proud teacher of Oxinity team.
By the way here you can learn a little more about the Scouts youth Organization.