AQPC

Author : Julien BERGERON, Teacher in Multimedia integration techniques - Cégep de Jonquière

In the wake of his experience in teaching computer animation in the Audio-Visual Faculty at Havana University’s Arts Institute, the author of this article shares his reflections and the lessons he learned. Emphasizing straight away the importance of defining and responding to the host establishment’s needs, he describes how he was forced to adapt to the technological limitations of Cuba’s computer resources. He then identifies the steps to be taken by teachers seeking a foreign teaching experience, insisting on the importance of preparing the content and identifying the pedagogical strategies, while also mentioning the difficulty of working in an environment that is void of one’s usual reference points. Relating his first few days of teaching in Cuba, the author relates some of the technical problems which made him aware of his personal limitations, as well as his re-appropriation, as time went on, of the basic mission incumbent on a teacher: confronted by students’ strengths and weaknesses, and also faced with his own, it becomes a question of living the human experience of evolution, progression and understanding. He concludes by stating that teaching means having individuals express the best of themselves, in Quebec just like in Cuba.