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INDEX

Part 1

Chapter 1: My first memory at school dates back as far as 1953. By Carmen Romero 6

Chapter 2: I was so scared that I couldn’t help crying. By Mª Ángeles Bolívar

7

Chapter 3: I concluded that it was all a product of a six-year-old’s imagination. By Amparo Guerrero

9

Chapter 4: It was so exciting!! We were losing the plot. By Inés Galindo

10

Chapter 5: I would have never expected that. but actions speak louder than words. By Gerardo de Dios

11

Chapter 6: I had not realised he was an iron fist in a velvet glove. By Juan Francisco Dorador

12

Chapter 7: I wish I had been a happy-go-lucky person! By Jorge Vidal

14

Chapter 8: I made my decision in the shake of a lamb’s tail. By Cristina Ramírez

15

Chapter 9: I had passed my language test by the skin of my teeth. By Alfredo Pérez

16

Chapter 10: Seeing my friends off … It was so sad! By Mirian Campanario

16

Chapter 11: University was supposed to be difficult. Now the ball was on my court. By Eva Rodríguez

17

Chapter 12: By a stroke of luck… By José Antonio Piñero 19

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Part 2

A teacher rarerly stops teaching and never stops learning

Chapter 13: In the end I cried, I don’t know why. I was walking on air. By Leandro Serrano 21

Chapter 14: While I was in the middle of this lesson, the phone rang. By Lola Urbaneja

22

Chapter 15: One must make do with what one has. By María Sánchez

23

Chapter 16: I was under a cloud. By Natividad Ruiz

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Chapter 17: And they kept rubbing salt in the wound. By Mª José Rodríguez

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Chapter 18: I should keep up with my colleagues, get cracking and learn how to master this new challenge. By Francisco García

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Chapter 19: They tried to keep their noses clean. By Inma Pascual

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Chapter 20: This has been a labour of love. By Javier Rodríguez

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5

My life as a teacher By Tim Watson

4CAL A 2012-2013

EOI de Granada M. Elena Tapia

A labour of love. For all my wonderful students, who are teaching me wonderful lessons.

6

MY FIRST MEMORY

‘Tim! What are you looking at?’ asked, not extremely angry, Mr.

Barton. It was a dark afternoon, I think, a dark November afternoon. I had

been looking through the window since Mr. Barton had begun the afternoon class.

‘Tim! Complete your task’ said again Mr. Barton. My first memory at school dates back as far as 1953. I was four

years old and I was attending Mr. Barton’s class. Mr. Barton was an elder teacher. I don’t know how old he could be. He was so kind, affective, sensitive. The sort of person who always was in a good mood. When I close my eyes, I remember Mr. Barton with his red woollen scarf. He was a tall and badly dressed man. I remember that he used to wear old and a bit dirty clothes.

My Infant School had two rooms. One of them was the boys’ room. It

was directed by Mr. Barton. The girls' room was directed by Mrs. Smith. Besides, the school had a large playground where boys and girls could play jointly at break time.

In the common playground, there were two big old trees. They were

as tall as the roof. When autumn was here, the wind moved their leaves and branches. The coloured leaves fell down and we had a fun trod on the leaves as they rustled.

They are the furthest memories I have of my Infant School.

Sometimes, they come to my mind. It was the happiest time of my life. I do like to remember my school and Mr. Barton. My school was so wonderful that I decided to become a teacher.

Carmen Romero

7

AN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE

It was a cold morning. The silence of the night was over and now I was in

the school, which was full of laughs and talks. Fortunately, ‘the big day’ had

already come and I was so excited that I had hardly slept.

I was five years old and it was my first school outing. Suddenly, my

teacher rang a little bell. We kept quiet and she began to talk with her sweet

voice. But I was so nervous that I didn't listen. I only thought about the zoo.

I went to the toilet cheerfully, as my mother had advised me to do.

Unfortunately, in the meantime my classmates started to get in line at

lightning speed. When I went back to the classroom, it was empty. I left quickly

and I ran along the wide corridor, but my mates weren’t there. I felt terrified.

‘Don’t worry. Take it easy!’ I said to myself. But something was hitting

strongly in my chest and I felt I couldn’t breathe.

I went to the stairs, I stopped and I listened, although I didn't hear

anything. Then I rushed downstairs screaming desperate…‘Wait for me, wait

for me!’

In the enormous hall the front door was locked. I tried to open it hitting

and pushing. I was so scared that I couldn’t help crying. Nobody could hear

me. I was alone in that ghostly school. No one would come back to look for me.

My legs were so shaky that I could hardly stand up.

Suddenly the door opened, my teacher was there. She hugged and

comforted me. It was the moment I decided that I would be a teacher.

Mª Ángeles

8

9

Looking back, I remember the amazing events which happened in a special moment in my life and that influenced my decision to become a teacher.

It was summer,

one of the warm and shinning Andalusian summers. I used to wear shorts and a t-shirt. I was quite young, I could be six years old because I had started to read and I loved it.

During the summer, I enjoyed living with my family in a

small and cosy house near the town. It was my grandparents’ house and it was situated in the countryside, next to a beautiful and breathtaking lake where ducks and small birds and many tiny animals lived around the lake. It is perfect! I said every morning while I looked through the window.

I loved this fascinating scene, so I used to go every

afternoon to the lake with my friends and we played to be biologists, looking for some tracks in the land and guessing which animal it was.

I used to be so careful to analyze the tracks that the other

children always waited for me to say the last word and decide what animal it was.

‘Let’s see! I think it is really interesting, it could be….’ I

said while I imagined myself as a brilliant biologist. I enjoyed watching their faces of attention and curiosity. I

considered myself the cleverest person and this woke up in me the ambition to be a teacher.

Quite a few years later, I concluded that it was all a

product of a six-year-old’s imagination and it was only a game.

Amparo

10

SOMETHING ABOUT MY LIFE

I was as imaginative as the best researcher, so I always

asked for many presents at Christmas, such as a machine for making sweets, magic games, chemistry games and the like. The more I investigated, the more I liked it.

The only problem was that my parents couldn´t stand me

being always hidden when I did my experiments. This is because once I had set a new table on fire playing with my chemistry game. I had been experimenting with dangerous products that I had found in my elder brother´s room. He studied Biology and he had got them at his university.

Fortunately, my brother realized that our house smelt

like rotten cheese. But, in spite of that event, I hadn´t learned the lesson yet. I told myself: ‘It was so exciting!!’

My parents and my brother were losing the plot. They

wanted to rely on me but the more they prohibited it, the more I wanted to find out strange and dangerous things.

One day, I saw an interesting television program about

risky activities. I couldn't understand how so many people were able to risk their lives so foolishly. For instance, some people came into fallen houses, others flew in a plane very low. In conclusion, I did not understand how they could have fun in that way.

Thanks to that program, not only did I think of giving up

my harmful game, but also I threw my dangerous games into the rubbish.

In the end, I thought to myself: ‘I wish I could be a science

teacher when I am older.’

Inés

11

When I was eight years old I was studying in a primary

school near home. I was a child who liked eating chocolate. One day, my mother bought me a bar of chocolate for the

school break and I went into the classroom and put it in my desk. When the moment of playtime came I looked for the chocolate bar but I didn't find it.

I started to get very nervous because I believed that some

of my mates had stolen it and I told the teacher. But I was ashamed to tell my teacher that it was a chocolate bar and instead I told him that someone had stolen my sandwich.

Then everybody started to look for my bar of chocolate

and after two or three minutes – for me they were almost three hours- the bar suddenly appeared in a corner of my desk.

No one had stolen the chocolate. When the teacher saw the situation he took my chocolate

bar, raising it in the air and saying: ‘Is this your sandwich?’- Everyone started to smile in silence. I thought I would never lie again.

I would have never expected that, but actions speak

louder than words. It was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life which reminds me to be honest.

Gerardo

12

When I was nine I think that ‘I had the evil inside’. I was always making trouble, although this situation was going to change in the next two months. My teacher Mrs Smith had broken her leg playing tennis and a new teacher was going to come. I was glad; I could not stop thinking about the first thing that I was going to do. The new teacher, Mr Jones - I will never forget this name – arrived at my class with the head teacher. Mr Jones looked like a kind man, he was overweight, bald and he had a white beard, besides I remember that he was wearing a red shirt. So when the head teacher left my class I shouted:

‘We are lucky children, Santa Claus has come to our class to give us some presents!’ Obviously everybody began to laugh. Well, everybody except Mr Jones. In this moment the new teacher came to me and told me: ‘You must be Tim, the head teacher has told me about you. Welcome to my hell.’ I swear, I was able to see how Mr Jones became a big red devil.

I spent the next two months going to school every afternoon and copying ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in my notebook. I have hated Shakespeare since this moment. I learnt a great lesson from my teacher, I had not realised he was an iron fist in a velvet glove. When my old teacher, Mrs Smith, came back to the school I hugged her and I gave her the biggest kiss that I had ever given.

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14

My name is Tim. But when my mother was angry with me

she used to shout: ‘Timothy Watson, come here’. I preferred that she called me Tim gently.

My nickname was The Devil. Why? Because, perhaps

when I was five years old I helped my mother to make a cake and I made a prank: By chance, I changed the sugar and put salt on that cake. The guests exclaimed: ‘What is this awful, strange taste Molly?’ My mother answered: ‘Indeed! It´s a new flavour from India’, but she looked at me up and down.

When I was twelve, of course, I was more mature. A couple of months after being twelve my father told me:

‘Tim, if you pass your test next June, I promise you an unforgettable summer in reward for your efforts’. It took me blood, sweat and tears, a tremendous effort.

‘Wow! That´s great! Fantastic!’ My father exclaimed. I’ve

never seen such good marks like yours! Tomorrow we´ll go to Dover.’ ‘Oh, daddy, the sooner the better.’

And there I was with a couple of friends flying kites on the

cliffs of Dover observing the seagulls while I was thinking about the moment when I had to return to secondary school.

I was scared to start secondary school. I wish I had been a

happy-go-lucky person! Actually, some close friends had sent me letters telling

about corporal punishments in secondary schools.

15

When I was fifteen we were in high school. Until then, I

hadn’t had a lot of good teachers. I looked at them with suspicion; I didn’t like them. They were the enemy for me.

During the month of March my teacher had broken his

leg. All my mates were very happy for it. We had more free time. I still remember those sensations of freedom playing football in the sport track. We felt that we were older. But soon all finished. I remember when my friend Tom said to us: ‘The new teacher is here!’ He screamed. ‘Oh! That’s awful!’ I said.

He was waiting for us in the classroom. I can still

remember the first time I saw him. In the beginning he was like the rest but gradually he started capturing our interest. This class was a turning point in my life. I made my decision in the shake of a lamb’s tail.

He was such a good teacher that I loved the time I spent

with him. I was aware of the luck to meet him because I realized

that he was the person I wanted to be. And I would like to think that I’ve kept my promise.

Cristina

16

When I was sixteen years old I liked going to my high school. It was a magnificent building in the centre of the city called ‘Padre Suárez’, where there was an incredible study environment. There was such high level that it was considered the best high school in Granada. Perhaps, on account of this I am a teacher nowadays.

Furthermore, the teachers were so demanding that we got

stressed. They were more strict than the current teachers. I was really good at studying Maths, Physics and Chemistry, Biology and Geology. I loved the Science subjects but I hated languages. I had a strict English teacher who usually gave me bad marks. She was always speaking English without a stopping! In addition, she was the kind of person who never stopped explaining. I had learnt thousands of things in English but I went on failing during the course.

In the end, in September I passed my English test by the

skin of my teeth. Lucky guy!

Alfredo

Mirian

17

Summer was finishing up and I was very excited,

something very important would start soon. Being accepted in my University had not been easy.

Although I had never lost the hope, I knew that there were a lot of students who wanted to study in this degree.

University was supposed to be difficult. Now the ball was

on my court. I would study very hard and soon I would be a......Teacher? No, I had always dreamt with working as an Architect but never as a teacher. I´m sure. I was eighteen and I thought that if I earned enough money I could travel around world. Not like my best friend who was going to start to study in the Teachers University.

Finally the day had come. I had been waiting for a lot of

time and now I was going to start University. I felt very important and self-confident.

I entered building and asked other student: ‘Can you tell

me where classroom number one is, please?’ She was explaining the way when suddenly the bell went off three times. ‘Oh, it´s the alarm’- I thought.

All students started to run to the exit. However, I was so

terrified that I couldn´t move. A gorgeous blonde girl approached and asked me: ‘Are you alright?’ And she went along with me to the street. She was such a beautiful woman that I thought she was an angel.

Nowadays, I look back on that day and I think that

although the classes were called off, I was very fortunate because I had just met the woman of my life.

Eva

18

19

A stroke of luck that would change my life

My time at the University had been great, but a new age had begun. I was only 22 when I got down to work. I had ended my degree only 6 months before and quickly I found a job in a big international enterprise where I supposed that I would have a great future. But the truth is that only a few months later I wasn't very happy about the way my life was changing. In fact, I felt I needed something else in my life. By a stroke of luck, one morning I received a phone call:

‘Hi Tim, it's Peter, can you talk for a minute?’ Peter was my roommate at the University, but since we finished there, we had never talked. ‘I have to make you an offer that you can't reject’, he said. We were talking for a while, and at the end Peter told me that he was working for a Non-Governmental Organization and they needed a teacher to work with them in South-America for 6 months. ‘What do you think? Do you want to join us?’

At the beginning I felt very nervous, and I didn't know what to say. Of course I was sure that I needed a change in my life, but what about my family, my parents and my friends? I would have to live far away from them, and maybe the most important thing was that I had to leave my job. ‘You're insane!’ I thought. ‘Lots of people would kill for this job and you're thinking about going away! Moreover, what do you know about working as a teacher?’ I remained silent for a moment, but finally I found the courage that made me say the three words that would change my life: ‘Count me in’.

Only ten days later, I arrived in a small and remote town in the middle of the Andes. Firstly, I was surprised about how the dust and the sand covered everything. All was brown and it looked like one of these places where you can walk for hours without seeing anyone. It was so depressing that I thought it was almost impossible to live there. Certainly, it was the poorest place that I had ever seen. However, Peter had told me that there lived the most cheerful people that he had met in his life, and I couldn't understand it. But only a few minutes later, lots of kids appeared running to me, screaming out with a funny accent ‘Maestro, maestro!’ When I saw their faces I finally figured out what my friend had told me.

My earliest moments there were exciting and it supposed a big change in my values. ‘All these children deserve a better life, and I will help them’ was what I thought my first day as a teacher while I was entering my class.

In the end, six months passed very quickly and I had to come back home, but I felt that I wasn't the same person as the one only half a year before had been working in a luxurious office in the middle of the city center. Something inside me had changed. After a sad and long journey my plane landed back. I went to the door. As the door opened, I looked at the sky. I breathed deeply, and whispered: ‘From now on I'll live my life otherwise: I do have to dedicate my life to teaching.’

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21

A teacher rarely stops teaching and never stops learning

Step by step, the years went on. I had been working for three years

since I finished the university, I was twenty-six years old, and was very happy to be teacher. It was a magical moment in my life.

All days I used to go to school in a very good mood and normally I

had good sensation with my students. Besides, the school was bigger than the previous one, so it was a fantastic way to learn from other teachers.

I can remember every student. They were easy-going, but one day

something happened. I was in my class, waiting for my students. Students usually had to

move from one classroom to another, and they spent five minutes to come, yet that day they spent a lot of time. When they arrived, they seemed sad and bad tempered. I knew something was wrong.

When they sat down, I could see that they were rarely calm. At the

beginning, I asked them what had happened. Nobody talked. I asked a second time so as to know more details, but nobody talked either. For five minutes I was waiting, even so my students were in silence all the time, quite quiet.

But finally one student began to speak. He explained to me than in

the previous lesson, they had been speaking all the time, and owing to this behaviour the teacher had to go out and had been crying.

Although I was angry, I thought to do something and change the

situation so that they should learn that what had happened was wrong. I was speaking with them quite calm, and they understood that

they had to apologize. In fact, everyone stood up and went out to find the teacher to talk to him and apologize.

In the end I cried, I didn´t know why. I was walking on air,

perhaps for being the happiest teacher in the world.

Leandro

22

MY LIFE AS A TEACHER

When I was five, I hated going school because teachers were moody, serious, arrogant, … Instead, I preferred to stay at home with my mother, because she was more cheerful, open minded and well –balanced than teachers.

However, when I was eight, I discovered that I wanted to be a

teacher; maybe because I became a kind of student that any teacher would like as a pupil and they trusted me, for instance, when teachers came out of the classroom they asked me to take care of my classmates.

When I was studying at university I thought about my future;

although I loved painting, drawing…. it was not well paid; I knew that if I wanted to have a stable lifestyle, I would get a good job, as a teacher, for example.

In order to be a teacher I started to teach Art in Ciudad Real when I

was twenty-four, as a temporary worker while I was working in a Pottery Workshop too. In these days I was confused. On the one hand, I preferred pottery, but the job was extremely hard and not well paid; on the other hand, being a teacher was a good option to earn a normal salary. For four years I´ve worked in both.

Lastly, when I was 28 I decided to prepare my exams to get a place

as a teacher and I passed it. One day, when I was thirty, I was teaching ‘Basic Elements on Design’. While I was in the middle of this lesson, the phone rang. It was a surprise, nobody could interrupt your classes in this Secondary school; I said to my students ‘Sorry, I have to answer, it´s just a minute’.

‘ Hello?’, I said. ‘Mrs Urbaneja?’ an

unknown voice answered, ‘I´m Mr. Smith, I’m preparing a master about pottery in the university, I know some of your pottery works, I think they are so good that I would like you to be one of the teachers in my Master. Could we meet this evening to talk about my offer?’.

To sum up, currently I have a part time job in a secondary School,

and a part time job in the University. It’s wonderful for me, isn´t it? Lola

23

ONE MUST MAKE DO WITH WHAT ONE HAS

When I was 35, I was living in a village 8 km away from my school. I used to cycle to school because I loved sport and I enjoyed nature while I was cycling. I often met my colleague Marc who lived in the same village. He always insisted on taking me to school in his car, but I preferred to cycle.

One day, I had to be early at work, since I had to prepare the

photocopies. Moreover it was a horrible weather; it was windy and it had been raining all that night, so I called my colleague Marc to ask him to take me to school in his car. He agreed, and we arranged to meet at a crossroad outside the village at half past seven.

I was waiting for an hour for Marc but he didn´t come. The later it

was the more anxious I felt. ‘I´ll be late’, I thought. To make things worse I had forgotten my mobile phone when I left home, so I couldn´t get in touch with him, even more, I couldn´t phone for a taxi.

As I was extremely dispirited, I decided to stop a car. Two minutes

later a car stopped. The driver looked like a kind middle-aged man, I told him my situation and he accepted to take me to school.

I had just spent such stressful minutes that I didn´t realize that the

man was driving through an unknown way for me. It was when the car braked in a traffic light that I was aware that something was no right.

The man looked at me and he noticed my worry, his kind face had

turned into a terrifying expression, I tried to get off the car, but the door was locked. Suddenly he was pointing a gun at me and ordered me to give him my wallet and my briefcase, I felt so panic-stricken that I couldn´t move. The man screamed again and I quickly reacted giving them to him.

Some minutes later I was in the middle of the street in an industrial

area, without my wallet or my briefcase, I was trembling with fear and shivering. Before I was free, the thief had threatened to hit me if I reported him to the police.

When I arrived at the school I found my colleague Marc furious

because he had been waiting for me for half an hour in another different crossroad.

It couldn´t be happening to me. From that moment I only utilized

my bicycle. One must make do with what one has.

MARIA SÁNCHEZ NARANJO 4º CAL A

24

Oh my god! What tremendous dream I have had this night..I´m really Tim Watson. I’m awake. This has been only a dream. I´m sure it has been because of what had happened last month to my classmate. ‘But…Tim what happened in your dream? What was it about?’ asked my wife. Then, I started to tell her what my dream was about:

‘I was forty. It was a freezing winter day. It was four o´clock on one

Monday afternoon. I was having a rest after having had my lunch when suddenly I had a feeling: I had forgotten my school keys on my desk. Suddenly my anxiety started to grow up so I decided not to put off the matter, and after drinking another coffee, I went to school.

After a while, I was opening the school door and I was starting to go

into the building when suddenly I heard a strange noise coming back from inside the school. As I had no time to understand what was happening, I decided to open the windows, take my keys and discover where the strange noise was coming from. Unless I was confused, I was watching a child coming toward me. The child hugged me. He was humming desperately, ‘I´m a good child, I´m a good child, I’m a good child.’

First, I switched the lights on, and I intended to calm the frightened

boy. The softer I spoke to him, the calmer he became. When he was calm, I phoned my headmaster to explain the situation. When he answered the phone, he seemed to be very worried. After that the headmaster told me that the mother had told him that her child had disappeared when they were going home when she had stopped to window shop.

In addition to this, the policemen come to school, examined the boy

and gave him back to his mother. Lastly, they explained the reasons why the autistic boy had disappeared. Earlier, when the boy was leaving school, he saw an interesting moving machine in the technology class. He liked it very much. This object fixed in his Asperger mind so much that he came back to school again in order to get close to the machine and he lost his sense of time. Meanwhile, the head master had already revised this part of the school, and had gone to another one. So seeing how late it was, the headmaster closed the school without realizing the child was still in there.

So, at that moment, I knew I was under a cloud because other teachers was thinking that I had done something wrong and they were suspicious of me, because Kevin, the autistic boy, belonged to my class.

Nati

25

26

Two years had passed and they kept rubbing salt in the wound. I couldn´t bear this situation anymore.

Every time I met some colleagues of that damn course they looked at me with such contempt that I felt very bad. If they saw me eating breakfast in the coffee shop they didn´t enter and ate breakfast later. I suffered with these situations, I felt so lonely and isolated at times that it affected my work.

What happens to you teacher? Have you slept badly? You have a bad face!. My students also perceived it.

I was very happy when I saw her near the mall. Jenny Smith was radiant, she looked more mature, now had longer hair and undyed, and she was in college. She thanked me for everything. She did it with my help. She gave me an affectionate goodbye.

Jenny Smith was one of my students in that course. Most of the students in that group had economic and family problems. Until then neither of them worked nor studied. I did all of them improve their results. From the beginning I connected very well with them. They had made many efforts and deserved success. I couldn´t fail them. I could not suspend them the course though the director of the high school ordered to me. I didn´t want to change the results. If I changed the results I would sink them into poverty again. I didn´t do it. A ll of them passed their exams and the end of year party was unforgettable. If the academic results at the high school were bad it would get a financial subvention. I had made the right decision.

Seeing my former student Jenny made me think and I changed to another school in which the most important thing were the students and not money.

M. José

27

Age 50

By my early fifties, I used to think that almost everything related to my work was finally under my control. Year after year improving on my classes, it had become a comfortable and proficient method of teaching, my own personal one. My students appreciated it as the results were better and better. But, once again, a new duty appeared in the horizon to make me start over. It happened that the educative authorities wanted our department to teach bilingual subjects. Four of us, among the fourteen we were in it, had to teach in Spanish the next course. If there weren’t enough capable teachers, some new ones would come to displace some of us, especially those with less seniority. Three mates already had the necessary skills to cope with this difficult situation; the four ones that were going to retire soon argued they couldn’t; and six others said they could have done it if it had been in French. So, there I was, all the eyes wide open staring at me. As they well knew, I had been learning Spanish during the two last years, and that made me sort of the ideal missing candidate. I agreed, but my inner feelings told me I wasn’t trained enough so I had to confess that lack of self-confidence; to deal with it I should keep up with my colleagues, get cracking and learn how to master this new challenge.

They eventually encouraged me to do it, and I did. That, what at first terrified me, is now one of the issues I’m more glad of.

Francis

28

It was a wonderful day. The rain had disappeared and the

sun was shining brightly. I decided not to take the car to go to the high school. I took de bus and I stopped in the park near the school. There I sat for twenty minutes. While I was reading my newspaper I was listening to the kids running to school.

Suddenly I heard a big noise that seemed a fight. I turned

my head and I saw a group of boys. I recognized some of my students. There were George, Charles and Matt, three horrible and rude young boys who had become my personal nightmare.

They were fighting against some boys and girls wearing

the uniform of Saint Paul school. I didn’t know why they were fighting but I decided to stop the fight and I ran screaming ‘Stay where you are’. When I arrived this was worse than World Ward II. George and Charles had some bruises in their faces and Mat twas insulting the other guys violently. The people who were in the park were watching the fight stunned. I couldn’t believe it.

I stood in the middle of the fight. I thought they were

going to hit me. I stared at my students and they slowly remained silent and still. They looked down ashamed while the other boys were running away. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked. Silence. ‘Are you OK? Come to class.’ I screamed.

While we were going to school we were talking about the

fight, about the futility of fighting, about violence and about how to avoid these situations. My students listened quietly as I spoke. It was the first time these three students seemed to listen to me. It was a strange but comforting situation. When we arrived at school they thanked me and promised me that they would try to keep their noses clean.

After some days I spoke with them and I asked why they

had stopped the fight and they answered me ‘because you are a good person and we respect your opinions’. In this moment I realized that a teacher rarely stops teaching and never stops learning.

Inma

29

Javier