Radom, Poland

Thanks to an invitation by the LMCS SIG coordinator I had the opportunity to visit Poland and speak at the Culture Lane conference in Radom. It was a great experience to go to Poland and meet teachers from Eastern Europe.

The conferene was devoted to various cultural manifestations – literature, drama, visual arts – and how they can be brought into ELT, but I decided to talk about Classroom Culture and how it is permeated by the culture that exists inside and outside the classroom walls.

‘The main objective of the Culture Lane Conference in Radom is to generate an interest in the use of intercultural materials in ELT. We hope to look at different concepts, materials, new technological developments, artefacts and literary texts with the aim to developing cultural competence in the ELT classroom.’

For me the most important thing was to meet other teachers from Eastern Eupope and to see how much in common we all have. I had a wonderful time in Radom and people there could not be more friendly and caring. I loved it!

Classroom culture

The language classroom has somehow ceased to be my natural environment in the last couple of mouths and that’s exactly why I have chosen *classroom culture* as the topic of one of my assignments for the Masters course. I asked a friend of mine who works in a public school in a disadvantaged innercity in Rio to give me an account of his clasroom and I have used this as the basis for my paper.

I do intend to go back to the language classroom, but I’ll almost certainly work a lot in teacher training and education but I don’t really think you can be of any help or service to your  students if you do not understand the nature of the place where they are going to work and live great part of their lives.

I’ve just finished the assignment and I’m looking forward to my tutors’ assessment of it. Interesting topic indeed, especially because I finished it with more questions than answers!!