The five reflections of a teacher on the school year that is now ending

BarcelonaAnother course is ending. June is an intense month for teachers, many topics need to be closed and we carry accumulated fatigue. Irritable students, final recoveries, tutoring reports, final exams and a lot of heat. These are days for making memories and putting down in writing all that we have experienced. I look back and I am left with five things that have happened this course: We have returned to writing by hand. My colleague Cristian Olivé said it in an Instagram post: “AI has become the most dangerous tool in classrooms”. In order to avoid it and prevent it from completely killing creativity, I have had to dedicate entire classes to writing in the classroom and ask for writings that can be started and finished in an hour. I have avoided assigning digital work and have insisted that everything be submitted handwritten because handwriting helps to fix ideas. I myself prefer to make handwritten lists of pending tasks rather than on my mobile, because when I transfer it to paper everything looks clearer and less burdensome. Talk, talk, and talk. The AI tsunami in education has made oral presentations fundamental for assessing a topic. I'm at a point where I no longer even ask for digital support (like Canva), because it ended up becoming a reading of what ChatGPT had created. You know that teenagers save more words and avoid calls more and more, and I've noticed a decline in communicative ability. That's why I'm also a big proponent of not cutting short conversations that arise in the classroom and letting students express themselves even if it's not strictly about the lesson. The questions or interests that arise spontaneously are unrepeatable and make that class unique. Perhaps I'm romanticizing the Socratic method, but I believe there's nothing more powerful than a good conversation. Reading in the age of screens. I have noticed a growth in the number of student readers. I believe we can now banish the refrain that says young people don't read, because I increasingly see teenagers reading between classes and even during recess. At first, I found it unprecedented and rubbed my eyes as if it were a miracle; now I'm used to it. I have also seen another change in the use of mobile phones in secondary school. At my school, every morning students must leave their phones in a drawer, and we return them at the end of the day. In all the years I was a tutor in 1st year of ESO, the drawer was quite full, but for a couple of years now, the situation has declined significantly, and this year I only kept eight phones in the drawer. I believe we are all educating more consciously and responsibly about the proper use of screens.Graduations have gotten out of hand. Here I open a can of worms that might be worth a whole article, but I find the topic of graduations very exaggerated. I'm not saying they shouldn't be celebrated, mind you? It's an important milestone, especially in the second year of high school, but all these identical dresses, in bright colors and designed for normative bodies, make me reflect a lot on the aesthetic pressure (which falls on them) and on the Americanization of this act. The dining hall as an educational tool.Graduations have gotten out of hand.Many times I am asked if I don't get tired of explaining the same thing, but you can see that each course is different, and new challenges always arise that make it a changing and chameleonic job. Teachers, it has been an especially intense course, and from here I send you infinite gratitude for the commitment and vocation you have. You can already see the light at the end of the tunnel. Rest a lot.

Croquettes, lentils and other school canteen dramas