ENGLISH TEACHER AND DIRECTOR EXPERIENCE IN SAN ANDRES ISLAND- COLOMBIA

Abstract

In the following narrative research project you will find the experiences, stories, comments and analysis about the life of an English teacher who study from the Island of San Andres with the Santo Tomas University and despite the difficulties and setbacks, was able to achieve his degree as a Bachelor in Foreign Languages - English. This research basically focus on the personal understanding of how he did it, what moved him to pursue his dream of becoming an English teacher knowing the difficulties that was ahead of him. In this case Enaguirre - that’s his pseudonym or as we may called him for the purpose of the research. During the research the main idea is to figure out and find an answer to the following research question: What are some of the most important characteristics of an experience English teacher and director in an English institute at San Andres Island?

One of the main goals of this research is to try and put all the experiences together and the stories that he can offer us that he think are very important for the purpose of this project and macro project on the benefit of the university as well. Also to try and comprehend how does a person living on an island, almost overseas provides important information that can be useful in the life of future teachers and those who are coming behind him in the interest of learning a second language, the passion, the motivation and the inspiration to others is crucial at this point. The stories in research help us to better understand the world of those who are involved in it, in this case teachers, students and those who are directly involved in the process of learning and teaching or we know it “Pedagogy”. We are storytellers, who are engage in narrative acts, because of the experiences we face on a daily scenario. As stated by Barkhuizen (2011), narrative research means different things to different researchers: For some, it means becoming involved in the big stories of their participants' lives, opening up and exploring vast spatiotemporal landscapes. For others, it means focusing on the here and now of narrative small stories generated in talk-in interaction. For some, reflections on the content of past experience are important narrative inquiry, and for others, it is the form of emergent narratives in conversation narrative study that attracts analytical attention. (p.409). During this research we will have the opportunity to face and experience codes, categories and the analysis of the different interviews that were done throughout the entire research process. We can find the following codes during the analysis: Family support, Sacrifice, Perseverance and dedication.