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Guest Blog! International Teachers Irene and Rocio Share About Their Passion Project, GaMar Talk

June 30, 2020 by guest Leave a Comment

“A year ago we decided to set off searching for new projects and to enhance our knowledge about education and teaching languages abroad; this is why we joined the “Profesores Visitantes” program and ended up living and working in Maryland, USA.

Irene (Ms. G) is a Music, English and Spanish teacher from Toledo, Spain; and Rocio (Ms. M) an English and Spanish teacher from Málaga, Spain. We both love teaching and once we met this past August we clicked immediately because we had a big passion in common: our profession.

These past months have had a lot of ups and downs; settling in to a new culture, country and educational system, but thankfully we have had many help and have been sharing ideas and resources with each other.

As many people know, teaching a foreign language can be very challenging, there has to be a lot of visual, auditory and active learning because motivation is crucial in learning new languages.

In March, our lives, as many others, took a huge turn and suddenly the best part of the day was taken away: going to school to motivate and share with our students how exciting and important learning a new language is.

How are we going to motivate all of our students to keep learning without seeing them? Also, our age range is very wide (from Pre-k to 5th grade) and we wanted to try and meet all of their needs through our computers. So after many many conversations, frustrations, planning and research we came up with “GaMar Talk”. We decided we were going to create fun, visual and dynamic videos to help the youngest ones learn Spanish while we were apart. Our main focus was to make it feel like the students were continuing to interact with our “real” selves so we chose to create characters that looked like us and had our voices.

Then the next idea hit us! Why create it only for our schools, when the whole world was in the same situation? We didn’t want this COVID-19 to stop kids from enjoying their learning! This is why we began making videos in both languages, with easy vocabulary words about diverse topics, basic grammar structures and with a little fun story to it. They are short and adaptable to each age, able to catch and maintain the child’s attention, which we know is often very short.

We are now creating a new video each week, in both English and Spanish, which we upload to our YouTube channel, and advertise in all our Social Media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and Pinterest) and on our Website.

This is only the beginning of a project we hope will reach out to more and more people each day, to help as many students, teachers and/or parents along this learning process.

Our videos have been very supportive for our distance learning. They are great for introducing new vocabulary words, trying to give their learning a meaning and a purpose, making it practical for our students, as we create situations where the language is not only useful but fun to learn.

As we have been receiving many positive feedbacks from our new GaMar Talk community, we find ourselves sparked and excited about designing new stories for Ms. G and Ms. M and all her friends!

We can’t wait to get back to our classrooms, but in the meantime we will enjoy watching our virtual GaMar Talk family grow, while we interact and get to know so many other colleagues and new friends around the world, that, like us, are trying to contribute to improve our society.

So if you have made it to this point, and you have found our project interesting, we would love to invite you to join us on our platforms and become a part of our community!

We really hope you enjoy them as much as we do, and we are open to new ideas and constructive comments, we are learning from this situation all together, and hopefully we will also overcome it too.

Thank you very much,

Ms. G & Ms. M”

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This experience changed my life! Now, I have more dreams and some other goals. I'm so thankful for everything that I've learned. I want to continue growing as a human and as a teacher. The Amity program is one the best things that ever happened to me." - Michelle, 2018-2019 Intern

We have been working with Amity for several years. Learning about different cultures, communities, traditions, music, arts, dances and more, helps our students to see the world as a global place fostering diversity and respect. Having a second adult in the classroom helps our teachers to be able to have more individualized attention to students and work on small groups. Amity has been a wonderful organization to work with, reliable and accessible, bringing highly qualified young people to work in our school."- Maria Buceta Miller, Amity School Coordinator, John Stanford International School

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One of the best feelings is sharing many wonderful One of the best feelings is sharing many wonderful memories and building a lifelong relationship with your host family during your program. 

"I am very grateful and proud to have lived such an experience!"

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Intern Alumni, Eliseo Rivas, shared his journey wi Intern Alumni, Eliseo Rivas, shared his journey with us and what he's been up to since he completed his internship with Amity Institute: 

"Thankful & Blessed. 🙏 I'm so thankful for having had these amazing opportunities.

Back in 2015, I had the privilege to meet such amazing children and host families in Burlingame, California 🇺🇸 through the Interns Program of @amityinstitute . As in every new experience, I was challenged academically and emotionally. But, that powerful opportunity impacted my life for the better! 

In 2016, I came back to El Salvador with more knowledge of the English language and the American culture which I have put into practice at @ccsa_sv and @superate_adoc , where I'm currently working as an English teacher.

In 2018, I loved reuniting with one of my host families in Costa Rica. It was a special moment for me because my father and my sister were able to meet and thanked them personally for all the support they had given me. Such an memorable moment, and thanks for keeping supporting me, @cindy.sibley and @fordsibley 

In 2022, a couple of weeks ago, I was invited to be part of another unforgettable experience. As part of the Spanish Immersion Program, students are arranged a cultural trip to a Spanish speaking country so they can use the language and be more culturally aware. I was given the opportunity to be one of the chaperones of the group so I joined @becerralisa , @cindy.sibley , and 9 students in Costa Rica for a 7-day trip. There's so much I would love to share about this experience, but I just can say that it felt like a dream. I loved to see the students hanging out, enjoying so much about this beautiful country, learning and sharing at all times. Costa Rica has a lot to offer, culturally and touristically 🤩 

Thank you so much everyone who helped and made this possible. What a powerful opportunity!"

We're honored to be part of your journey, Eliseo. We can't wait to see what the future holds for you!

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