Case Study: Vicky Saumell's project

I read about Vicky Saumell's work at a school here in Argentina and got really interested in it. At first, because of all the case studies I've read so far, this is the only one that took place here. But then, as I read about it, I realized there's much more to it than meets the eye.

After doing some research among students and teachers, she came to the conclusion that the way they were teaching English was not engaging to adolescents. They did not care about it, so she decided to develop a new curriculum. The whole department worked on it and the main decision they made was to do away with coursebooks, which they found were not appealing to students and sometimes forced teachers to deal with topics that had nothing to do with students' interests. Teachers, then, started planning their own projects taking into account what their students wanted, liked and giving them a choice. They started designing their own materials. But the most important  part of the project was the assessment, because formal testing was also done away with and teachers now assess students' work on the process of creation and on the final product.

Vicky Saumell redefined the whole syllabi and made it meaningful to students and to teachers as well using authentic materials. If a class is not motivated, then the teacher can't be motivated. He's failing. She succedded in getting to the final stage of Puentedura's SAMR model, and she used technology to improve the contents students had to learn, but never losing perspective of what's really important: pedagogy and content knowledge above all.

I found this project amazingly interesting because I'm one of those teachers who think coursebooks are restrictive. Editorials impose what they think is important for students to learn and our work can, sometimes,  be a bit blurred because of this. I also think it's great that an institution supports such a project, because otherwise it wouldn't have been possible, and Vicky could not have done on her own. I'd really like to work at a school like Vicky's.