ABOUT ME

Me, myself and I

✔ My name is Claudia López Cubel

✔ I was born on 3rd August 1995 and I'm 22 years old right now.

✔ I'm from Valencia, Spain.

✔ My main hobbies are to spend time with my family and friends and to travel around the world but I also like reading, foing to the cinema and spending time in a natural environment.

✔ Another hobby which is related to my career is learning foreign languages. I speak English, French and a little bit of Portuguese. In the future I would like to study Italian and Arabic.

✔ I studied a degree in Translation and Interlinguistic Mediation in Universitat de València and right now I'm studying a Master's Degree in order to become English secondary teacher.

These are some basic facts about me but if you want to know more about my experience as a student and my teaching philosophy keep reading. 

Before becoming a teacher, I was a student and that is what I am going to talk you firstly. In the following document you will get to know more about my childhood, my relationship with English and my student path.




In case you are interested in knowing more about my linguistic profile, you can have a look at my Language Passport and my Language Biography which are elements of the European Language Portfolio.

Once I have defined myself as a student, I want to talk you about my teacher profile. As follows, you will find some ideas that summarize my philosophy of teaching:

• Albert Einstein said that “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned at school”. I couldn’t agree more with this quote and I extract two guidelines from it. Firstly, when it comes to the contents and the subject, I personally think that we should place emphasis on comprehension of information rather than on memorization since, in this way, the student will probably retain information and this will be useful once he has left school. Secondly, I think that education goes beyond the school, the exams and the books; it has to do with values and principles that will guide our decisions and our attitude in life. This is why I strongly consider that beyond contents, we have to teach our students to become conscious and responsible citizens, to be critical thinkers and kind persons.

• When it comes to teachers, I think that good teachers –what we all should aim to be- have some common characteristics. Taking for granted that we know perfectly well the contents we teach, this is not enough since we should love our subject and also know how to transmit this love to our students. We should also believe in our students’ possibilities and work with them, especially with those who seem that are not willing to learn, in order to help them reach their fullest potential.  Finally, we should be close to students, know them well (their interests, ambitions, personal circumstances) and show them that we are willing to help them whenever it is needed.  

• I believe that learning should be interesting, challenging but, above all, it should be meaningful and useful. In my opinion, learning should be continuous and we should show students that topics within -and between- subjects are related. The main purpose of the English subject should be, as I see it, to allow our students to speak, write, listen and read in English in a given level and teachers should provide them with the tools to use English in real situations.

•  My approach could be considered student-centred and also based on team working since I think that students can learn from each other. I consider myself a democratic teacher since I would like to reach agreements with students. I think that time should be devoted to conflict solving and group reflection on important topics, even if the subject schedule has to be reorganized afterwards. Another point that is essential for me is to plan lessons in advance as well as to prepare extra activities and have several resources to use in my lessons. Moreover, it is of the utmost importance to make students feel comfortable, to create a good learning and working environment in the classroom so that they are relaxed and can easily learn. In my opinion, is it crucial as a teacher to be always positive and encouraging and to avoid being pessimistic. Finally, I consider that language is best taught and learnt in a classroom where there is discipline. I think that teachers should be consistent, that is to say, to be strict with what students are required to do and to keep our word as for the consequences in case students do not respond to the demands.