I am Paula Belló and I am the fourth Guest Teacher on Teaching English. I was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina, on in December 1970. I have lived in this same city my whole life, with only some interruptions caused by study trips abroad. I graduated as a teacher of English from Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, National University of Tucuman in 1994.

Since then I have been working with students in primary and secondary schools in the private sector. In 1995 I started working at the same school where I continue teaching now. It was one of the many private institutions which started expanding their English programmes in the 90s, therefore finding a job after graduation was not a difficult task. Since then I have been working with special groups formed by students who have had difficulties in their learning processes, who work at a slower pace, have failed in completing their assignments and tests and moreover, who have had severe difficulties in responding positively and adapting to disciplinary rules. I must confess that these groups have taught me many valuable lessons and have always forced me to keep informed and updated with new trends, so as to look for ways in which I can engage them positively in the learning process.

My everyday job implies waking up very early in the morning and being at school at 8:00 am sharp for assembly and ready for classes that start at 8:05. My classes in the morning last 80 minutes and are attended mainly by the older students. On the other hand, the younger students attend classes mostly in the afternoon which last only 40 minutes. After my long school day, when I arrive home I have lots and lots of classwork and homework to correct, because we are asked to mark students regularly in order to follow their learning process and inform parents about how their children are doing, their advances as well as when they have problems.

I also invest a great part of my extra time of work at home to design tasks and materials and also to re-design tasks and classwork from already existing materials. In this way they can fit the needs of my problematic groups, so that every student in these classes feels that he/she knows the topic and can solve the task in English appropriately. I really love this creative task and believe that though difficult, it is very enriching and rewarding because it also implies a lot of class observation and analysis in order to better cater for my students needs.

During the last years and especially during the present year I have especially focused on the development of different ELT projects referred to different areas. As I have already explained in the interview, I have focused on three main projects during 2008. One of them refers especially to the development of materials to apply CLIL with students of different ages and levels of competence in English; the second one focused on the development of values and the third one on designing reading materials to help students become aware of the importance of developing reading strategies in order to be able to read and understand academic texts.

Inspired on these projects I presented two academic papers with the collaboration of my colleagues from school: a research work on Reading Strategies in May 2008, at I Coloquio de Adquisicion de las Lenguas organized by the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, National University of Tucuman and a workshop on materials to develop CLIL at the XXXIII FAAPI Conference for teachers of English in September 2008.

My interest to follow up postgraduate studies goes back to the year 2000 when I started attending the required courses to complete the Career of Postgraduate Degree in Language Teaching at the National University of Tucuman. There I developed my interest in Second Language Acquisition and Learning, but unluckily could not finish my final thesis because of my duties at work. It was evident that my demanding job at school and my study interests were not compatible at the time so I decided to look for scholarship opportunities and applied to many until the British Council provided me with the extraordinary opportunity of studying abroad and completing my Masters Degree. In 2006 I was awarded the Hornby Scholarship and thanks to this award I could finally obtain the financial help necessary to finish my MA in ELT, which I did at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. Previously I had already been awarded another British Council recognition. In 1996 I had been appointed as Spanish Language Assistant at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, UK.

Just to complete the picture of my working responsibilities and working day I have been developing an e-learning course on Methodology for teachers in primary state schools for the last six months. This on-line course was supported by the British Council Argentina and the Ministry of Education of Tucuman. This has been a great opportunity to step into the world of technology and have a look at the future of education. The final results of the course are still to be analysed but from my personal point of view it has been very successful because most of the participants have acknowledged having learnt not only about methodology, but also about having a new image of technology and its importance in the modern world.

Talking a bit of what I do when I am not working I can say that I collaborate with APIT the Association of Teachers of English in Tucuman and I have just been elected as a member of its committee. We are organising our second seminar for next Saturday and that means a bit more work than usual. In spite of every thing I still have time to meet my friends and go to the cinema and the theatre, activities which I really love!!