Tell us about your time in the U.S. |
For me, it was the year of immense professional and personal growth. From the very beginning, I had a feeling that my days were to short: auditing wonderful courses, working on projects, reading at the library, having coffee with colleagues, talking to students, going to conferences, writing, teaching, exploring … At the time, it seemed I had too much on my plate, and that it would be better to concentrate on two or three things. With the hindsight, I guess I could not and should not have behaved differently. That was the time of my life, and I am happy I made the best of it. I learned an unbelievably lot of things from informed, challenging and insightful interactions with American colleagues. Last but not least, I also learned how to make the best of my diverse academic and professional interests, how to blend them to the benefit of my teaching and research. |
How was your internship experience? |
In May 2005, I moved from Iowa to Vermont to do my internship at the School for International Training. Being an SIT graduate, I wanted to go back to that place and get engaged in something challenging. And I was entrusted with a great responsibility. I was engaged in designing and co-teaching an in-service teacher training course “Peace education in language teaching”. The course examines ways of bringing peace education into language classrooms and discusses the role of language educators as peace builders. It was a great success, and SIT included it as an elective course in its curriculum.
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What are you working on now? |
Currently, I am engaged in three projects: coordinating training of teachers of young learners, working on training of trainers for secondary schools and exploring ways English/Serbian and Serbian/English bilinguals express their emotions. |
