The title of my last school PD of the 2022/23 academic year was Student voice.
Its goal was to encourage student participation and to come up with strategies that help us listen to their input.
Why?
Because when students are involved in the education process they’re more engaged.
When they’re more engaged, there are less discipline problems and we can focus on teaching (and not on dealing with nonsense.)
It’s a win-win situation that benefits everybody.
And all we need is just to hear their voices.
Student voice
That PD reminded me of our first lesson that included direct student participation.
It's called El regalo de Navidad.
The first part of the lesson is an article from a real newspaper about Andrea, a Spanish flight attendant that sang All I want for Christmas is you on a Palma de Mallorca-Madrid flight.
Then, students from several schools sent us the questions they had for Andrea so we could interview her.
Some of the questions were about the story (Were you nervous? Who had the idea of singing in front of the passengers?) but many others were about her job as an air hostess.
It seemed students were really interested in finding out more about her profession.
We decided then to make two videos, one about the Christmas story, the other about being a flight attendant.
The result of that second interview is Quiero ser… Auxiliar de vuelo.
Teacher voice
When we hear students’ voices, unexpected things happen.
And they’re positive, because we find out their real interests, and that leads to more engaging lessons.
Teachers’ voices are also crucial.
We’re so happy with Quiero ser… Auxiliar de vuelo that we want to do it again.
This time, we’d like to have your help to decide which profession we should make a lesson about.
Please participate in the poll above, and make sure you’re subscribed to our mailing list (below) so you know when and how you can forward us your students’ questions.
We want to hear their voices.
And yours.