Fame at last!!

"Ah, you're Fiona Cooper, I've heard about you!" So said Nelson Aguilera, a university bigwig and author, when he read my name badge as the conference speakers were having lunch on Friday. It was the Paraguayan conference of the Association of Christian Schools International and I was there to do two workshops on teaching English in a fun way to 3-11 year olds. I'd heard a lot about him, he's quite famous in education circles here, so I felt it was quite something for him to have heard about little old me!



I had great fun doing the workshops, though it was a challenge for me because I really feel my expertise is in the pre-school age group, so I didn't feel quite as confident about everything as I had when I did the workshop to the pre-school teachers in March. Two of the teachers who'd come in March were also there on Friday, and one of them told me she was using a lot of what she'd learnt at the previous workshop in her teaching. It was really encouraging to have that feedback.




I was surprised in the morning on Friday when, as the first participants trickled in to the room for my workshop, they were speaking English to eachother and to us (Sam came with me as my moral support and techie!) so I asked them whether they'd prefer to have the workshop in English or Spanish. To my surprise they all wanted it in English, so I did it all in English, even though my powerpoint and all my notes were in Spanish. More and more people came into the room after I'd started and I felt a little for the latecomers since they didn't get the choice of having it in Spanish! We played games and sang songs and there was much fun and laughter. I love teaching when it's like that! There were about 40 teachers at the morning workshop and when I repeated it after lunch, 12 people came. ("siesta time;" a similar thing happened to us last year when we did the play scheme workshop at the conference).




At the start of the afternoon session, I asked which language they wanted it in and they chose Spanish, so I got to do the same workshop in two different languages, which made me feel very versatile indeed!! One of the morning teachers returned in the afternoon with someone else from his school. It was better to have fewer participants because everyone could get involved in the games, whereas in the morning, some people had to sit and watch and then, when I gave them the opportunity to participate, were too comfortable in their chairs to come and sit on the floor with me!!




So, there I was doing exactly what I hoped I'd be doing when I said to God after our play scheme workshop at ACSI last year that I'd like to do one on teaching English. The teachers who came to the workshops on Friday all seemed very interested in what I was sharing with them and my prayer is that every one of them will have gone away with new ideas that they can implement to add something new to their teaching.