CELEBRATING MY 3Oth ANNIVERSARY IN ELT

Well, well, well, I have always dreamed on this day to write about my anniversary as an EDUCATOR.. 30 YEARS .... 💓I have lovely flashbacks and am very lively about my first experience as a teacher, that combination of dynamism, joy, and tons of rapport, the complicity between planning and being on stage, which made me feel truly honoured to be part of my students' lives.

It is amazing that sensation when you are on the stage, and everything flows as you are performing many characters ( as we educators have many roles)

                                                   ME- GRADUATION  OF AN EDUCATOR

Being part of their learning process, be next to them, not in front of or behind them, just to be by their side. to support academically, emotionally, and being part of a family, they consider me, not only school students,  after some years teaching business english I have felt how my students learnt to work in teams through collaborative tasks, and I have been a second mum for most of my students in all ages and have the privilege to be named MUM.

I am not a biological mum, but during all these years, I have the blessing to have so many kiddos, some older than me, and they know how much I appreciate that link.

 

I am unable to figure out myself being retired of such a rewarding and beautiful job. There are many circumstances that we gotta face as in any job. However, when you feel like you're tired or just about giving up, the most precious gifts are the memories of your students,

There is no job as an educator where you can see the growth of a person in all aspects, and the love of those human beings that you treat like your kiddos to teach, to solve, to listen, to be next to them in the path of their lives.

              2014                                                                           2025

I would like to advise young teachers, because I began teaching at twenty years, that always do your best for your students, your planning, your performance, the reward at the end of the lesson is that magical sensation that contributes to your personal growth as a human first at all, as a professional, as the eternal learner for being better educators.

Then, Patricia Salguero is still on the road :) celebrating diversity, being unique, being human, for pioneering humanistic education and the human factor that is essential nowadays.

For  30 years more on the road on my path in ELT, and the amazing blessing of teaching with a humanistic factor.

I would like to give special thanks to all my students during these 30 years, also to my professors for all their dedication and to my awesome  PLN, who are a big inspiration for me.

With all love, 

Patty

CLOSING 2025 : Celebreating The Most Beautiful Gift We've got: "BE UNIQUE"

As many of you know this blog is about Humanistic Education, and how can close the end of my year about the way my experience with the human factor has been for almost thisrty years so far. First of all, everybody knows I am an english teacher who loves creating rapport in classes online, faces to faces or in another planets; the thing is that AI is making our role easier for that lazy ones (mean colleagues who do not like make efforts about trying by themselves and ask the chat GPT whatever they do want.)

Well, this year for me has been an outstanding adventure about my process of learning in many aspects, mainly in Neuroscience, awareness about Inclusion and Diversity, and the way how could who is part of the role of being an educators also might be part of inclusion and it makes me very puzzled, overhelmed, disgusting with the system and ocasionally with myself as I could not change how people do behave and think in they way they do about the responsability impies as educators - that´s not definetely a joke.
As a matter of that, I am still here in the battle fighting with a few weapons for a peaceful education system, where everybody was able to accept no matter race, disabilities, skin colour, social status, and so on.
I do believe that I do not close my career as an educator even if I will start working not as a teacher, I always be the freelance teacher, the volunteer lecture, the freelance teacher trainer as I can not imagine myself doing something else that teaching, I guess at the moment I was born, teaching was born with myself, and I do not really cut that link we have for long life.

I do want to close 2025 with a close post to celebrate AI in our generation with a 21st century control for students, and Let´s Celebrate Inclusion, Diversity, Be Unique, as is the most beautiful gift we could receive. Let´s being sort of mad with yoursel if you haven't already felt happy the way you want to do, Let´s cheers for the greatest people who We admire to contribute for this place named Earth to be a better word, and Finally, but never unimportant Cheers for the ones, who fight against all odds for their own feelings and now are together, living the most pure feeling, no matter whatever.

DO NOT WAIT AND BEGING NOW...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maTP315XZCQ&list=RDmaTP315XZCQ&start_radio=1

                               HUG SOMEONE , SMILE AT STRANGE,  BE HUMAN

With all love,

Patty Salguero

INTERVIEW WITH BEN GOLDSTEIN: I Believe A Lot Of What We Think Of As “Inclusive Practice” Is Actually Stuff A Lot Of Us Have Been Doing For Years. A Lot Of it Is Actually Common Sense, Things Like Developing "Empathy "with your students

 1        Who is Ben Goldstein ?
I’m a writer, teacher and teacher trainer in ELT. I’ve worked in the profession for over thirty years. I’m British but I’ve lived in Spain for decades, así que hablo español también.
 I’m passionate about making inclusion more accessible to teachers so that they can create a safe environment in class in which all students can fulfill their potential.

2. Who/ what inspires you as an English Teacher, teacher trainer, author of the book “30 ideas of inclusion in the world of ELT”?
            Well, I think reading and researching topics like Inclusion is what really inspires me. For example, my whole approach to Inclusion which is person-led rather than label-led, one that focuses on community rather than on the individual, that idea sprang from researching the topic at length.
Another inspiration are the teachers that I meet and the ideas that I share with them – that is invaluable really because you might feel that your approach is right but you don’t know until you get feedback from others in the field. Without that, you’d  just be working in a vacuum and I feel that’s a problem many academics have, that they are out of touch with the reality of the classroom.

3. How is inclusion transforming the essence of what we do in Education?
To be honest, I don’t think it is transforming what we do. In fact, I believe a lot of what we think of as “inclusive practice” is actually stuff a lot of us have been doing for years.
A lot of it is actually common sense, things like developing empathy with your students, creating a sense of community, using the students’ own language, encouraging peer learning, fostering intercultural awareness – a lot of this we’ve known about a long time but it is all very much involved with inclusive teaching practices. 
What’s changed is the way all this is framed. We are now more aware of greater variability in class, of multiple differences be they cultural, religious, socio-economic, cognitive, physical or sensory. We now need to appreciate these differences and that’s what’s new – we need to develop a greater sensitivity towards our learners  and greater curiosity about them, find out what makes them who they are. 

 
4. How do you stay motivated as an english teacher, teacher trainer, and author nowadays?
Writing is quite a solitary business and it can isolate you – sometimes I feel like I’m working in a bubble or an echo chamber surrounded by people who just agree with me.  So, I’d say my main motivation comes when I travel and meet teachers and get to know their everyday realities. That’s when I see if my work is relevant or not and if my approach strikes a chord with teachers. And, of course, each place I visit is very different so I end up learning a lot about diverse teaching contexts and scenarios – this helps inform my work a great deal. In fact, I couldn’t do what I do without being able to get these perspectives from fellow teachers on a regular basis.

5. What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced as an educator?
I’ve been a writer of ELT materials for years now and I think trying to make these more inclusive has been my biggest challenge. Publishers say they want to be inclusive and you have a lot of EDI guidelines that you have to follow but then they send you guidelines based around Cultural Considerations as well and the two documents often just end up contradicting each other- this is very frustrating. I think things are starting to improve slowly but we still have a long way to go.

6. Apart form teaching, do you think your work on inclusion is making a difference to others, if so in which ways?
It’s very hard to say. The book is still very recent. I’ve started giving talks about it now and a lot of teachers do seem to be getting the message but it’s still early days.

 
7.  Finally, What are your words or pieces of advice to teachers everywhere who want to keep their inspiration alive or even motivate themselves to keep going and growing in the field of inclusion?
I think it’s important not to see inclusion as simply an extra or add-on, it has to be something that is intrinsic to all our work. But I think big changes can be made in little ways, by small gestures, it’s a process. It’s important to demystify inclusive practice, it’s not rocket science.  Teachers don’t need to change their teaching practice overnight – in fact I believe a lot what many language teachers do is already inclusive.
 
The important thing to understand is that any adaptations or accommodations that are made by teachers to suit students’ diverse needs have to be beneficial to all students, no student should feel that they are receiving special attention– at least that should be avoided where possible.
 
 
Finally, I think teachers should see belonging as an end goal to all this. In some way, it’s more helpful and less divisive term than Inclusion. After all, you can be included but still not feel like you belong.  Belonging it is not something that is bestowed on us by others, but emerges from meaningful contribution to a group and I think that is something we can all relate to.  

Simply by showing greater sensitivity and kindness to our students, being more interested in them as people, their lives, their interests, their stories – that’s as good a place as any to start.

Extra information:

Ben is running a course with the amazing ITDI named: "Inclusion: Creating a sense of belonging - 6 week course starts on November 16th. Do not miss this amazing course

Here you are the link to register:

https://itdi.pro/community/course/inclusion-2025/#component=course

Hope to see all of you there on board :)

Patty

A short Post : Back After The Pandemic And Being So Grateful Too Many People

 Well, I guess the first big question is why I did not write for how long.... There are so many reasons..

First of all. I would like to dedicate this post to all the ones who inspire to keep on walking on my baby project ( my book),which is dedicated to my mum with all love and privilege.

One of the big reasons that I had to give up on writing here was to look after my parents, who passed away four and three years ago. 

I was focused on them and later on myself , my family, and my spritual needs, which was an amazing time for me and I do recommend everyone to do it.

I am back now with all the energy as a child :) very motivated to share and care for you all my PLN

and everybody who read me and who is always invited to contribute in the blog. 

Nowadays everybody is speaking about AI and and that´s awesome. However, we´ll always 

have a room here to speak about humanity in teaching and living.

We are very aware about inclusion and diversity, and in a few days in this blog I hope we wll have an interview about this topic with a big name, that is a suprise, wiil not same more, just be more human, if be could treat with love to plants, why not to people?

Because some of them. ARE DIFFERENT to us???? WE ARE UNIQUE . THAT IS WHY THERE IS

 DIVERSITY, GOD CREATES US UNIQUE, If we have different colour of skins, races, cultures,

 religions,sex, or have a spectum disorden : Are we  them ones with the RIGHT to make their lives

 worse for them?      ........  Definetely BIG FOOD FOR THOUGHT TO ALL OF US. 

Let´s get more information about inclusion, diversity, humanistic education, 21st century. 

STOP LABELING PEOPLE!!

You may think I am angry writing this post, but I am not. I am sad, because it is that grief reality of our society, but as educators, we have the role to control this ,
and spread the world.

Let´s spread love to all the ones who are different to us and are such as beautiful souls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WJlDvNzNN0

Patty

Teaching Ourselves in a Hard Year

The Marvellous of Being Called Mummy Instead of Called Teacher

I have never called my teacher mummy at school, never ever, and how I could be called my teacher mummy if my mummy was incomparable, she was everything to me, she was the one that when  I was a kid took me to school, she brought my lunch box at break time at school to be sure I eat, because I was very special to eat, she was the mummy that everyone would like to have of my school partners, and the teachers adored her because she was a nurse and she always donated a first aid kid; and most of the time that someone had hurt in the break, my mummy cured 

him/her, she was my mummy.

When I become a teacher 23 years ago, I grew up loving children and teenagers. However, my speciality is secondary. I have always been aroound children, and in my first year of teaching, I always visited the kindergarten room, I love so much  the liittle ones , but I was their teacher, and I was very young. To my surprise at the end of the year, the parents of kindergarten asked me to be the God mother of the Graduated ones of

Kindergarten, the kids choose me.

I still remember it was a huge joy for me and a mix of emotions about making my speech for those little ones on the day of their graduation, and I thought what am I  am going to give them as a graduation gift? I was just a simple teacher in her first year and  I did not earn so much, I have just started my career as a teacher, so I spent my whole December salary and I bought those19 kiddos a very thin Golden chains with her initials names, it was nothing comparing to el the love that those little kids have given to me that year, being a new teacher, in my really first year.

And how can I say about my own students?, their love was huge, their jokes always delete any sadness, hugs,their kisses, also their tears when they had home problems and they told me, and I was very Young but I NEVER LEFT THEM, I was always there , and I told them: Tomorrow will be better holding them tight; at the end of the year, they gave the surprise of my life, a big, big ballon I always dreamed to have one like that and the ballon said : For our mom, and a very huge teddy squirrel, it was very big and so beautiful, I am 1,54 cm, the squirrel was taller than waist, that day I cried a lot because  I am very sensitive and all of my children hugged me because I am sensitive, some of them cried too, and their parents took pictures, those kids are adults now , they have their families and  I sometimes saw them because they live near my parents´ home where I live now, and whenever I see them, flashbacks come to my mind of those little faces, hugs, when they called me mummy, y then then called me Miss, they got confussed , caused they got more time with me than with their parents. And it was… I WAS HER MUMMY AT SCHOOL.

As the time passed by I went to other schools to teach, and I listened to the teachers in the teacher room comments like: “ When are they going to leave? How long is left to end the year? Have you noticed Tania ( invented name) always wants to hug you? And Kevin always wants to give you a Kiss? How sad and how deep Grieg I had to hear those comments, because those teachers were parents at that time, and they knew what they meant that a teenager needed a hug or a give a kiss to someone, they were our children at school, and we were not there just to teach contents from the curriculum, we were who replace their parents at that time, and who spent more time with them, who knew every

single-family problems situation of each of them, of single parents families, we knew that many of those kids did not have a dad and mum together, we knew that they have serious problems at home with their families.

A grateful time.. 10,000 visits

       

            Any moment,I will reach 10,000 visits! How exciting! Thank you to all of you for helping me  reach this milestone! That’s a lot of zeros!

Why Grateful?

Thanks from the bottom of my heart to let me open my being with you all. These four years have been an awesome experience for me. 

This is just a little note from me to express how grateful I am with God, life, my beliefs, and you all.

A humanistic Side in ELT is deeply honoured and thankful in its four years of life with your 10,000 visits. 

"She turned her can'ts into cans and her dreams into plans." 

Patty.

RESILIENCE… with the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

When faced with adversity in life, how does a person cope or adapt? Why do some people seem to bounce back from tragic events or loss much more quickly than others? Why do some people seem to get “stuck” in a point in their life, without the ability to move forward?

Psychologists have long studied these issues and have come up with a label you may be familiar with: resilience. When faced with a tragedy, natural disaster, health concern, relationship, work, or school problem, resilience is how well a person can adapt to the events in their life. A person with good resilience has the ability to bounce back more quickly and with less stress than someone whose resilience is less developed.

Everybody has resilience. It’s just a question of how much and how well you put it to good use in your life. Resilience doesn’t mean the person doesn’t feel the intensity of the event or problem. Instead, it just means that they’ve found a pretty good way of dealing with it more quickly than others.

Everyone can learn to increase their resilience abilities. Like any human skill, learning greater resilience is something that you can do at any age, from any background, no matter your education or family relationships. All you need to do in order to increase your resilience is have the willingness to do so. And then seek out ways of learning more about resilience, either from search engines (and articles like this one), or with the help of a trained behavior specialist, like a psychologist. (Harold Cohen, Ph.D.)

How Do You Increase Resilience?

There are many different ways you can increase resilience. Having supportive relationships in your life with your family and friends seems to be an important foundation according to much resilience research. Good, positive relationships help a person with reassurance and encouragement when times get tough, and seem to help support a person’s ability to rebound more quickly after a difficult event or problem in their life.

Relationships are not just important within the family, but outside the family too. Having a strong network of friends (and not just “Facebook friends”) is a valuable component of building better resilience. Strong social networks appear to be a key foundational building block for this skill to increase in your life.

There are other factors that can help you increase your resilience as well, including:

§  Having a positive view of yourself (self-image) and confidence in your strengths and abilities (self-knowledge).

§  Being able to regularly make realistic plans, and then being able to regularly carry out your plans.

§  Being able to effectively and in a healthy manner manage your feelings and impulses.

§  Having really good communication skills (or you’re actively working to improve them).

§  Having really good problem solving skills (or you’re actively working to improve them).

§   

These are just a few of the areas where a person can work on in order to build better resilience.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Accept reality. No doubt you would like to have total control of your life, but that is simply not possible. Friends will move away or marry; siblings will grow up and leave home; circumstances may force your family to move, leaving behind friends and all that is familiar. It is better to accept reality than to let negative thoughts overwhelm you.—Bible principle: Ecclesiastes 7:10.

Look ahead. Focusing on the past is like driving on a highway with your eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. An occasional glance is beneficial, but you really need to concentrate on the road ahead. The same is true when you are confronted with change. Try to keep your eyes fixed on the future. (Proverbs 4:25) For example, what goal could you set for the next month, or six months?

Focus on the positive. “Resilience is about attitude,” says a young woman named Laura. “Find positive aspects of the circumstance you are in.” Can you list at least one advantage that your new circumstance offers?—Bible principle: Ecclesiastes 6:9.

A young woman named Victoria recalls that in her teen years, all her close friends moved away. “I felt so lonely, and I wished that everything could have stayed the way it was,” she says. “But looking back, that’s when I really started to grow. I came to realize that growth requires change. That’s also when I started seeing possibilities for new friendships that were all around me.”—Bible principle: Proverbs 27:10.

Focusing on the past is like driving on a highway with your eyes fixed on the rearview mirror

Do things for others. The Bible says: “Look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4) A good antidote to your own challenge is helping others with theirs. Anna, 17, says: “As I grew older, I came to realize that when I could help someone else who might be going through a similar situation—or a worse one—it was rewarding!”

How to Build Better Resilience

Building better resilience takes time, effort, commitment, and focus. It will not just happen to you overnight, and it won’t just happen to you if read a book about resilience, or begin work with a therapist. It’s a process that will take months to learn and master. Don’t be frustrated by this, because unlike your eye color or height, resilience is not a trait but rather a skill that you can readily enhance with patience and training.

Seek out additional articles online about resilience to get your start and keep in mind, there’s a lot to learn! You may benefit from seeing a therapist or psychologist (which can you do right now online too), or a life coach, to help you in your journey.

Keep in mind, too, that according to the American Psychological Association, a person’s culture “might have an impact on how he or she communicates feelings and deals with adversity — for example, whether and how a person connects with significant others, including extended family members and community resources. With growing cultural diversity, the public has greater access to a number of different approaches to building resilience.” This may be something to be aware of in your resilience journey.

 Conclusions:

•  Stay positive.
• Relax, nobody hurries a situation.
• If there is no solution for a problem, there is no need to worry.
• Each day has its owns worries enough to worry for next day.
• Trust in yourself.
• Move forward.
• Do not give up.

Do not get anxious over anything and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your mental powers by means of Christ Jesus. 

Source of information:

https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-resilience/ 
The Bible 

Patty Salguero.

Why different?

                                WHY DIFFERENT THEN? 

Being different is part of ourselves, part of the rich diversity, then why we are somehow classifying people for being different, it is very clear at institutions now, the question is :"Are we ready to face how different we are from the other and mainly accept ourselves as we are.?"

I do feel I need to write about this, some months ago I saw how my PLN was getting differences in big names about being genders and that stuff, and currently it touched my own particular side, we are being created with that need to do things better than the other, and compare how different we are, I do know there is a subject about values and principles  at schools, now it comes to my mind the question if we the rest of teachers who do not teach that subject  are we helping that signle and alone subject by  implementing something for contributing  in our planning,?

There are million of learners who spend more time with us than with their parents,no doubt about it. We cannot deny it, it is like that, I am not a mother, but I cannot imagine my kid being envolving in such a teaching, we need to teach united, we do not play from differet teams colleagues, we play for the same team that is called: EDUCATION, perhaps many can say I have enough at home, have to make lessons ,presentations, mark all days, prepare material, rubrics and so on, now I would you like to ask ourselves a question honestly in your meditation space : Are we aware about that responsibility from us? Yes, they are not our kids, we have ourselves stuff, but then who cares about this, who cares about bullying, about self respect, self control, autonomy, who parents? It would the most awesome answer but parents pay that school with two jobs in many times and the time does not play a good job for them.

Trying to get flashbacks I decided to go to 2014 first time when an educator  posted the story of myself when I was a very young teacher, and I got the memories of all changes I wanted to do, and it is frustanting for many of us because we cannot change a system of preparing kids for international exams with some CLIL to make the idea everything is going to be a dream lesson, but we are very aware we are not doing that, we wouldn't  like to make  less paper work , and all documments that are only papers at the end, because we do feel our kid is not learning meaningful and there are no times for working in projects or we don't all have the same technlogy as others, it is horriby frustrating to see what we  do want what we know how it should be but we just can not.

Any suggestions?

Once I took an online course and my mentor was Ms. Penny Ur , I got very surprised and fascinated when she told us (teachers) fusilade the book, the book cannot fusilade our own creativity, cannot be more than our love for changing this ,but again how we could do it.. if we are not united. I am not for or against anyone here, I am just saying we colleagues  please realize we need to be united in this change , we might need to adapt things up to our heads, but the only thing we can do it , it is being together, so why don´t we share the same t.shirt ?, named I am an educator and I need a change for my kids, you know why" I need ", and not they need, it could be better for any they need, but you know something I think everyone who is involving in teaching realizes we love our kids, that´s why with the power of adulthood I will say :I need a change for the people I love and we will do it altogether, it does not matter age, hair  colour, gender, nationality, just your care and love for what teaching really involves in what we will part of our responsability is and their happiness on the spot, of human beings who live with us in class.

Let's give it a try at least.
We all can do it, but all united.

Patty.

Your Voice Matters

Your Voice Matters.

Reflections of today.
Making learners realize about the importance to speak up.

Since that first early moment I got the contact with a group of teens this year, I felt something special, that something which makes you think they are so quiet and there must be a reason for that.

First days I got the pleasure to be co-tutor with a Math teacher an incredible educator and human being, thanks Roger for that awesome support and your amazing encouragement.

Days go on and I realize, those kids wanted to have a book open on page “34” or something similar, some of them even asked me: Miss, when are we going to do grammar worksheets?

It was sad to notice they thought the way of learning was through a paper, then I started thinking on the idea about how to make them become noisy in the good sense of the word, of course; as everytime I saw them, their faces wanted to cry out many stuff, but something inside did not let them do that. Fear? A bad concept of respect? Or maybe the lack of being listened?

Bingo!!!, it was a mix of all of them, but one  got the first place: they were not being listened, they got information priceless aim for some colleagues, and what about  their thoughts, opinions, critics, beliefs, ideas of those teens. Unfortunately, they  were sadly dead.

Somehow there was a way those teens need to express their sayings, we started by working on collaborative tasks:  collaborative writing, collaborative speaking activities, collaborative reading and also collaborative listening, the last one has been the hardest as they could not listen to each other, Why? Nobody remained them, the importance of being listened and being respectful among peers.

Little by little with warm up actvities base on values according to their age, because believe me no teen would care about values stuff for us adults, so I had to be on their shoes and think about the way they do, and mainly how they have been feeling.

It was amazing and the most remarkable time to see how the groups of those teens have started to critize things, say they disagree and give supportive reasons, how tolerance flows up in the class, and how they realize there was time to be aware their voice matters.

They were learning English, but nobody noticed , Why? Because I was not on page 34 exercise 3b, EXACTLY!! I was in another syllabus, the humanizing syllabus, the one for building awareness, which is vital for every individual as  the need to speak up, they could show how great their creativity is, and little by little  go deeply in what they want to defend and say to adults.

Still remember once a group  told me, what about if you bring the school authorities,teachers, and our parents and we make them sit down to give them a talk, the big questions: "Will they listen to us?" " Who knows?" " Who cares?" “WE DO!!”

Let’s do it!! That’s how my baby proposal has grown to make my learners become speakers, to express their inside, to inform what really happens in a teen life, to educate we adults to stop labeling teens for being teens and please think beyond.

Last month, they finally could understand a test is a paper , a grade is a number, but it was not as significant as the reward to feel they do something more than completing a paper, I asked them to go over Lima to work on a Project of cultural awareness and realize both sides of our country, not just the pinky one, also to check and remember our tragedy times of terrorism , those times most of their parents lived as I did, to ask people in the streets what they think about a particular place and realize life is not only school, as in a few months they will be leave  school and go to  the true world, and they should be aware  they need to be ready. My best reward the great satisfaction they did produce the language in what they do enjoy and many of them have discovered the ties of empathy among themselves.

I am not sure how many got me, but my sensation does not lie to me, I made those teens believe it is time to close books, it is time to talk about the news around the world, around our own town, it was time to think about how we can contribute in a better way to this society,  it was time to say: 

“MY VOICE MATTERS.”

In honour of my fifth graders!

Patty.