Internship at public school: institución Educativa Antonia Santos, fostering self-cultural awareness in the english language with kindergarten students

Abstract

In Colombia, the Ministry of Education recommends the teaching of English as a foreign language at the preschool level, with the intentionality of educating bilingual and competent people from an early age. This implementation, which evidently has a positive effect on the children in acquiring the language, has a disadvantage and that is the distortion of the cultural identity since, being in early childhood education, the children are not aware of their own yet, and the fact of teaching them a foreign language that brings with it a cultural background represents a reason for the preschoolers to get confused, and not know how to identify what is proper to the place where they were born and what is not. Although the problem seems to be the teaching of the English language at such an early age, it is not. On the contrary, as it is such a versatile language, it can be used to teach many other things, for instance, self-cultural awareness. Its teaching not only benefits cognitive development but also the progress of cultural identity and a sense of belonging, as well as helping children to achieve a lexicon with a completely broad and fluid panorama in English while respecting the identities in all areas that make it characteristic of their roots. Therefore, this paper reports my experience during my internship teaching preschool at the Antonia Santos public school, in which I developed a mega project called "where I belong" focused on teaching self-cultural awareness in English. To achieve this, I applied the Project approach supported by Total Physical Response to connect with students effectively and make a meaningful impact in an age-appropriate way. Finally, this document presents the achievements of the mega project regarding my students’ growth and my personal and professional advancements.