Interview with Mrs. Teresa Arjona González
Teacher of Mathematics, Robotics, Industrial Technology and ICT in Secondary and Baccalaureate. R&D Project Coordinator.
"Effort and perseverance. They are the bases of my day to day and it is what I ask of my students»
1. HELENA AND NOUR: How long have you been dedicating yourself to education? What other jobs have you done?
TERESA: This is my seventh year practicing in education. I also worked as a Site Manager in Malaga when I finished my degree in Agricultural Engineering, I also dedicated a few months to research at the University of Córdoba after finishing my studies in public works, but it was not until shortly after that I began to dedicate myself to what that has really become my vocation, teaching.
I had the opportunity to start at the IES Salesianos in Málaga to cover a maternity leave and then I continued at a school in Córdoba, where I taught for five years. In turn, in Córdoba I began to train teachers in technology and methodology through the Maecenas Foundation, with which I am currently working.
For personal reasons, I returned to Malaga, thanks to a training that I offered to the teachers of the Alborán School and they decided to hire me as a teacher as well. Today I work together at the school and I continue to train teachers from other schools in Spain. I am also a professor of the University Postgraduate Course in Educational Innovation.
2.HELENA Y NOUR: What does it mean for you to be the Coordinator of the R&D Project at Colegio Alborán, a Secondary and Baccalaureate teacher, in addition to being a teacher trainer?
TERESA: For me it is a great pride to be part of the Alborán team, especially at all those levels. It takes a lot of time to prepare each of the parts, but I do it with great enthusiasm, since the satisfaction I get from each of my tasks is so great that it more than makes up for that time and dedication that I must invest every day.
3.HELENA Y NOUR: How does an agricultural engineer end up fully immersed in the world of education?
TERESA: The truth is that since I began to study at the University I began to give private classes, at first it was to help my classmates and little by little I began to enjoy teaching. As I have said, I started working as an Agronomist at the end of my studies, then the opportunity arose to work as a Site Manager and I finally decided on education, which is what filled me the most and continues to excite me.
4.HELENA AND NOUR: What is your daily motivation to continue evolving?
TERESA: As John Dewey, an XNUMXth century pedagogue, said, “Whoever dares to teach must never stop learning”. Learning is something that engages, in fact, if you dedicate yourself to education it is something that you should never forget. You learn from everything that surrounds you, and of course, you learn from each of your students, their needs and concerns. These concerns and interests are what drive me to keep moving and evolving. In the end it's all like a big gear, that if you want it to work you must dedicate time and energy to it.
5.HELENA AND NOUR: What could you say is your motto then?
TERESA: Effort and constancy. They are the bases of my day to day and it is what I ask of my students. You can be more or less smart and awake, but if you don't have a work dynamic and a record to establish what you learn, you will end up not taking advantage of it. It's not about everything you know, but how you apply it.
These two qualities weigh much more than the coefficient of each one.
6.HELENA Y NOUR: What does the R&D project in education imply for you?
TERESA: Research helps us improve and renew our lives and modernize the situation. Innovation and development allow us to respond to the need to know and improve a certain educational reality. Innovate in education and analyze the results and effectiveness of these innovations to advance in the improvement of results. Developing consists of carrying out a project to finally see if the objectives that we initially set ourselves were achieved.
7.HELENA Y NOUR: Where do you see this school, which is one of the most recognized Spanish schools in terms of commitment to this type of progress, in five years?
TERESA: To be able to explain it with a simile, imagine that until now education was like an upward slope, all the schools saw each other, some were in front and others behind, but we always saw each other. Today, at the speed at which everything is changing, we could compare it to a curvy road, so that if we lose agility or speed, we stop seeing those in front of us and those behind us.
Today education is undergoing many changes, we are preparing ourselves not only for these transformations, but for the future.
Although the current educational system proposed by law does not make our task easier, the joint effort of all the teachers together with the training line that the School Management is committed to, encourages us to adapt to each and every one of these changes that are coming. demanded by society and by the new generations that are incorporated into our classrooms. We are changing little by little with a firm and safe step.
8.HELENA AND NOUR: What applications can the use of Robotics and Programming have for learning?
TERESA: Educational Robotics is generally based on the pedagogical principles of constructivism. The constructivist approach defends practical learning through the resolution of concrete problems. As the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, one of the most important precursors of this theory, stated, "the child does not store knowledge, but builds it through interaction with surrounding objects."
This allows the student to make decisions continuously and provide creative solutions.
I suppose the type of discipline also changes. Is it still the usual punishment-reward or does technology also imply a new mentality?
Technology itself is just a tool. It would be of no use if we use them with an inadequate teaching methodology.
9.HELENA AND NOUR: Why is teamwork so important?
TERESA: Cooperative Learning is one of the most appropriate methodological strategies to promote the constant interaction of students with the socio-cultural context in which they live. Working in a team helps to develop values such as empathy, mutual aid, participation, the assumption of responsibilities, favors being aware of what one knows, awareness of one's own mistakes and self-regulation of learning, and also fosters communicative interaction. oral and written.
The discipline of the class is linked to the methodology you use, of course they change, in fact today the punishment-reward does not work. We have creative students who require creative discipline.
10.HELENA AND NOUR: What is your Department's next project?
TERESA: We are still studying it, but I can tell you that the subject in which we are investigating the most lately has to do with Artificial Intelligence.
