30 October 2017 · Sara Marugan
Today I turn 36 and… 10 years teaching in secondary school!
This article was machine-translated from Sara's Catalan original. The writing is hers; the translation has not been reviewed by a person. Read the Catalan original →
Another year, another birthday. Today I turn 36. On a day like today, ten years ago, I started teaching in secondary school — and ten years have gone by! Today I start teaching at 8 a.m. with a Year 10 group, and I will finish in the afternoon with a student from Valencia, Pau, who is sitting the C2 exam there.
This year I combine teaching at a state secondary school with private lessons and the IOC. I would like to mention several of my students: Anna, a journalist who travels from Girona to prepare with me for the Catalan-language teaching exams, and my IOC students on the access course to vocational training. One of them, having recently become a mother, sent me a photograph of her newborn son dressed in a Barça kit. From here I want to say hello to all my current IOC students. This is the third year running that I have worked at this landmark online institution, the Institut Obert de Catalunya.
Thank you too to all the blog's readers, including some teachers of Catalan in Argentina and Germany who tell me they now teach Catalan to their students thanks to this blog. And I want to send encouragement to those teachers who work with love every day despite the daily difficulties — among them the Catalan teacher Carlota Navarro Torres. My heart, my spirit and my courage are with you.
For all of that, there is no greater joy or happiness — beyond having a birthday — than being here, year after year, telling you about the path I walk each school year, easy or hard, and about how I grow intellectually, spiritually and as a person.
Foto de portada: «Birthday cake with candles», de Francesca Cesa Bianchi (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 IT).
