Who am I?

My full name is Omar David Parra Peña. I am 27 years old. I am an English as a foreign language teacher and I have been working as such for almost a decade. I am an easy-going, old-fashioned, hard-working, determined, responsible, loving, sensitive, sincere, sympathetic, charismatic, down-to-earth, and funny young man who loves solitude and good company from time to time. I love cooking, eating, traveling, trekking, reading, working out, playing videogames, watching series and movies, sleeping, and spending time with some of my relatives and a couple of friends. I love driving, too! I find it relaxing.

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            “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” This is one of the many quotes coined by Albert Einstein and is certainly one of the most powerful and enlightening ones when it comes to education, one I just could not agree more with. A single but wise phrase that every single educator, parent, instructor, director, orientator, teacher, facilitator, student, etc., should be aware of. This phrase in turn should be the core of every single syllabus and thus of all educational institutions no matter their curriculum. As an educator and facilitator (in the field of teaching English as a foreign language), I always take into consideration my students’ realities, needs, expectations, previous experiences, learning styles and rhythms, multiple intelligences and their learning pace for everybody is completely different from one another. The same way a doctor cannot prescribe the same medications and treatments to all their patients, a teacher cannot educate everyone in the same fashion. This indeed will lead us to failure when trying to achieve the proposed learning objectives and working towards them.

            In my almost ten years of experience working as a teacher of English as a foreign language, I have had the opportunity to work with different populations namely: kindergarten, elementary school, secondary school, tertiary education (undergraduate and postgraduate programs), public institutions, private institutions, students with special educational needs, and so on. Moreover, I have also had the opportunity to work with different types of curricula such as Project-Based Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Task-Based Learning, Flipped Classroom, etc., which have helped me jumped into the conclusion that an educator must always get to know their students deeply enough so as to understand and realize what is the best learning strategy, methodology, method, approach, etc., that works best for each of them.

            Speaking of Pedagogical Mediation per se, it can be defined as “the teacher-student relationship in the quest for learning as a process of knowledge construction.” This term goes hand in hand with another one: Rapport, which is “the relationship that the learners have with their teachers and vice versa…a class where there is a positive, enjoyable and respectful relationship between teacher and learners and between learner themselves”. Put together, these two concepts are fundamental and of utmost importance to the achievement of the proposed learning objectives of every curriculum. Many times do teachers fail to acknowledge, recognize, understand, and remember that there are both external and internal factors that, undoubtedly, have a positive or negative impact on the learning process of apprentices thus boosting it or hindering it. Something must be done about it and it is here where the importance of both Pedagogical Mediation and Rapport, when it comes to language learning, relies upon.

            I chose this master program because it is in accordance with my bachelor of arts in teaching English as a foreign language and because it pursues the same objectives which are gaining deep and enough knowledge and understanding of those meaningful praxes that are going to help me as an educator help my students boost their learning process, and acquiring more knowledge behind the craft of teaching languages. I expect this course helps me achieve the learning objectives I stated before.

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Why did you choose to be an educator?

Because I am passionate about it and like Nelson Mandela once said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

What do you like most about your profession?

What I like most about my profession is that I am contributing to the construction of a better society.

What is the greatest satisfaction you have had as a teacher?

The greatest satisfaction I have had as a teacher is that I have helped my students achieve their goals in life and thus they have achieved a better quality of life and are now able to make the life of others better. This is a beautiful cycle.

In your opinion: what is the sense of being an English teacher?

-Helping students gain access to pieces of information written in a different language from their mother tongue.

-Showing students the beauty of other cultures.

-Contributing to the construction of a better society.

-Eliminating the linguistic barriers that are posed by the differences in languages and thus allowing communication with the vast majority of the population worldwide.

-Contributing to the enhancement of the field of teaching English as a foreign language.