LEARNING THEORIES

PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCES

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I have never been very good at maths and certainly did not enjoy it in the least when I was at school. As far as I can remember, I started developing a strong aversion to the topic when I was around 9 or 10. It was almost physical and I can perfectly recall an incident, where I was asked to come to the board to do an exercise. The memory is still so vivid! It was a very painful experience as I had to demonstrate my problem-solving skills in front of the others. No need to say that I froze up and was unable to think of anything else than stress and shame. I loved my teacher back then: she was usually very kind and considerate, and I think that she genuinely wanted to help me but the fact that I had to react on the spot in front of my peers was something that triggered a negative reaction to anything remotely connected with figures and calculation.

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When I was studying languages at university, I was very much in a different state of mind because I loved what I was doing. Not all the courses were interesting but I particularly enjoyed the literature classes. I had a wonderful 60-year-old drama professor who could impersonate Juliet, MacBeth, Blanche Dubois or Mercutio all at once. When I had to prepare for the exams, I actually spoke out loud quite a lot. Back in the days, I did not have much opportunity to practise my speaking skills, so the only way for me was to tell stories recycling the course material by speaking as much as I could. It was excruciating walking back and forth in my teenager’s bedroom and making things up for the sake of memorising and practising but exhilarating at the same time as I felt that I was gaining fluency and eventually managed to get my tongue round some difficult words and phrases. I think that the professor in question really helped me develop a strong sense of dedication and determination when it comes to language learning.

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6 or 7 years ago I decided to take an intensive, certified teacher training course. I had been doing a lot of different things up until then, working for the non-profit and cultural sectors, doing different types of activities. I was at a stage where I realised that I wanted to go back to teaching, something that I had done years earlier but gave up as I felt I was too young and ill equipped to face the challenges of the job. The course was fairly intense and the trainer was a very professional and inspiring lady who set the tone right from the start. From day 1 we had to teach. I loved the course as it was a very hands-on approach to teaching and she introduced a wide variety of techniques in such a subtle way that we were all encouraged to give our best in what we were doing and experiment as we went along.