I had never thought of it, but once you twig the idea, you feel better with yourself as a teacher. When I was younger, it would have been impossible to shout in class or talk to other students when our teachers were speaking. In other words, the teachers were the authority in class. If they decided so, they would not repeat their explanations and they would not tell us how they made out their assessment calculations. We were invited to leave the classroom – sometimes forever – if our teachers decided we were misbehaving.
This is nolonger true: teenagers decide now what they eat at home; they have their own properties – mobile phones, video games, etc. – and they argue with their parents if they disagree with their opinions. Of course this is also happening during lesson periods. Our students tell us aloud if we say or write something wrong in class, they want to check their exams and they ask us how we made our assessment calculation – even if they aren’t right at all – . Thus, we could state that Spanish people are getting used to freedom. The problem is parents still demand the same explanations as their sons as daughters: they both, parents and their siblings want to have meetings with teachers to make decisions about teachers’ work. Needless to say that they always want to have positive marks at the end of each term – it doesn’t matter if they worked hard or not -.
Due to our education, we tend to be as flexible as we can, but you see, the supervising process we are going under is making the whole stuff really difficult.
No more complaints this time. Thanks to Speak Up magazine for the nice article at number 327.