Meet Rodrigo Lizana, the Global Academic Director of ECELA Spanish Schools. He is celebrating his tenth year of working for ECELA, and previous to working as the Global Academic Director he was a Spanish professor in ECELA Santiago. Rodrigo is currently in the process of making more unified curricula and a more effective initial Spanish exam in all of our schools. He also takes the time to give a few suggestions as to what you should see, taste, and experience in Santiago, Chile!
VV: Good morning, Rodrigo! Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to interview you.
Have you always been the Global Academic Director at ECELA? What did you do previously?
RL: I have always been employed as a “professor”, in quotation marks because [my employers] had already at that time asked that I prepare and create special [Spanish] programs, travel amongst schools in Santiago and other places, view integrated curricula, make our books and materials, etc…
VV: What are your goals in coordinating study plans, materials, etc… amongst all ECELA schools?
RL: The goal of doing all this is to guarantee a standard service in all of our schools, in all of our classes no matter the professor nor the school’s location.
VV: Why is this change advantageous for ECELA students?
RL: We are making a big step [with this change], and it’s going to be neither quick nor easy, but we hope to be a language school of more languages, as many as there are out there. Right now we want to become an institution that is one hundred percent professional, where nothing is left to chance or completed at the last minute, where the processes are constantly observed and revised and made better. We want to be an institution that holds a relevant place in the international scheme of things that is connected and cooperative with other renowned institutions. We want to be a reference for other schools and hold the position of a leader in the market [of language schools].
All of this will be a beneficial result for the students, ensuring the quality of their education and giving them the added benefit of having a diploma from an ECELA Spanish class.
VV: Have you already noticed an improvement?
RL: The classes of professors that have taught more than one year and who have had additional qualifications receive much higher evaluations than the classes of new professors. The new initiatory exams are accelerated and more exact; they produce fewer errors in assigning [students their class according to level]. The democratization of the local academic coordinators has already begun and we have academic coordinators chosen for their co-workers in Santiago, Mendoza, and Cuzco. The idea is to do it in Lima and Viña del Mar, too.
The professors in Santiago have improved upon the yearly teaching review based on necessary criteria and upon improving the quality [of their teaching], and based less on merely doing a review just because. The schools in Santiago, Viña del Mar, Mendoza, Lima, Cuzco, and Buenos Aires already count on original materials, specially prepared to draw out the full efforts of Spanish classes, having been pondered and elaborated upon to satisfy the communicational objectives of our Spanish study programs.
VV: I was a teacher for three years and, for me, it is still an excellent base for much of what I do on a daily basis. How has being a professor helped you with your career of Global Academic Director?
RL: It is everything; it is my base, it is my origin. Thanks to my nine years giving classes at ECELA, I am who I am. In Chile the career of Spanish as a foreign language doesn’t exist. I tackled Spanish as a foreign language solo, learning from my mistakes, improving through evaluation, investigating new techniques, planning classes, applying research that I found, and sharing experiences with my co-workers.