Jobshadowing Europe is much more than an opportunity to travel and observe; it is a pathway to educational excellence and adaptation to a constantly changing world. Our goals are clear and ambitious: 1. Enhance the key language teaching competencies of the teacher of languages: We aim to be exceptional teachers capable of addressing the diversity of our students and guiding them towards success in language learning. We need updated and flexible skills to tackle the challenges of the modern language classroom. 2. Explore new practices in art and languages: We yearn to discover methods and approaches that foster inclusion, equality, and critical thinking. We want to bring art and technology to the heart of our teaching, inspiring our students and keeping the spirit of our renowned DECCA alive. 3. Promote the internationalization of the Official Scholl of Languages Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: We dream of an international environment where every experience is a valuable lesson. We want to understand how schools in other European countries approach teaching, expanding our vision and enriching our teaching practice. We face the reality of decreasing demand and increasing diversity in our classrooms. We want to be prepared to masterfully respond to these challenges, building a dynamic and vibrant school where every student feels valued and understood. Jobshadowing Europe offers us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the European educational world, learn from exceptional colleagues, and enrich our practice with new perspectives. It is a journey towards continuous improvement, towards a passion for teaching, and towards creating a bright future for our educational community. This has been a project that has excited us from the beginning.
In our past reflections, we identified the training needs of our Language School. We feel the urgency to enhance the key competencies of foreign language teachers (defined by the Cervantes Institute in 2012), ranging from organizing learning situations, evaluating student learning and performance, engaging students in monitoring their own learning, using and exploiting ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for knowledge, to managing emotions at work. We acknowledged the diversity of our students and the need to better address it, as well as to strengthen our ability in language mediation. Updates in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, with its Complementary Volume, posed new challenges, demanding a quick adaptation to linguistic and methodological changes, especially in mediation. Furthermore, following the success of the KA201 DECCA project, Developing English Communicative Competence through Art (which we coordinated from 2015-2017), which was an example of good practices in Spain and a success story in Europe, we understood the importance of continuing to innovate and expand our perspectives, as well as fostering international collaboration. We decided to further internationalize our Language School, after a 3-year pause, through Erasmus+ projects, aiming to enrich the training of our teachers and improve educational quality. We concluded that participating in Jobshadowing Europe would provide us with the necessary tools to address these needs. Given our previous experience, mainly in structured courses and the low quality offered, we recognized that the best way to learn is primarily through direct observation of other professionals and educational institutions, so we committed to mainly engaging in observation-based learning activities. Our commitment to educational excellence drives us to seek inspiration and knowledge beyond our borders. With determination, we embark on this project, aware that each experience brings us one step closer to our vision of quality education that is constantly evolving.