blog 5- Future job

It’s not easy to think about where I see myself professionally in the future, but I know that I definitely want to get a PhD sometime in the near future. I would like to do more research on immigrant language identity and therefore, the kind of work I do would be related to that.

Ideally, I’d like to work in the Ministry of education because I believe we need to define policies to better integrate our immigrant learners. I also think that Chileans could better benefit from coming into contact with people from different countries and cultures if we find ways to make immigrants more active participants in education aspects as well as diverse social-cultural activities.

Another area that interests me is developing assessment material for young learners and adult learners. In public schools, much of the process of assessment has to do with just memorizing information and not really using the new knowledge in a critical way. It’s fundamental to teach young learners critical thinking skills because they are useful not just for learning a new language but for any area of life. Assessment in English at schools should better integrate the use of passive and active skills. Learners should be able to ‘do’ things with the language and not just show they’ve memorized things.

Regardless of what I end up doing, what I really need is stability. University teachers nowadays do not have contract so we work under precarious conditions with no job security. We have to work in different places and it’s really tiring and it takes time away from class prep. Sometimes I feel I´d like to do more things in my classes but sometimes I’m just really exhausted! So I guess the most important thing right now is to have work stability.