EPALE - Elektronisk plattform för vuxnas lärande i Europa

Short bio

As a teacher of Croatian language, literature and history, I have worked in almost all areas of the profession which include bookselling, publishing, editorial and proofreading work and all forms of teaching - elementary school, high school, preparatory courses and adult education.

My story

Every type of teaching is demanding, but at the same time a stimulating challenge. Work in adult education is particularly interesting because it enables a different approach to teaching and opens the new perspectives. Every school is a school of life, and our personal and professional development should not end with the end of formal education. It should be permanently continued.

Acquiring new and upgrading existing knowledge, broadening horizons and developing intellectual curiosity are prerequisites for self-realization in personal and professional life. By learning, we are always closer to the goal.

I have been working in adult education since 2011 in Ambitio College. I tried to apply the work experience of high school teaching into adult education, and soon I realized that teaching in adult education opens a completely new perspective on teaching in general. A different view of the contents offered, a view from the world of adults, those who have upgraded their former school knowledge with life and work experience, enabled me to experience my work in a different way, to change my perspective, to learn and grow again and again.

I have always seen learning as an integral part of my profession. Who teaches, needs to permanently learn a lot. It is important to expand and upgrade professional knowledge, but it is even more important to learn about people, interpersonal relationships and themselves.

It is a great challenge and a difficult task to keep up with a world that is changing rapidly and unstoppably. We must not allow the hustle and hecticness of the world around us to rob us of personal and family peace, but on the other hand we must never stop when it comes to learning and acquiring skills.
The skills we acquire through education are not only the skills we need in our professional activities; they become life skills, tools with which we solve life's problems. The more tools we have at our disposal, the easier it will be for us to deal with obstacles on our life's path. That is why I believe that lifelong learning is not only important because it allows us to take a new or different professional path, which allows us to be competitive on the labour market, but it is equally important because it allows us to create additional values in our own lives.We learn to conclude, think and solve life's problems by concluding, thinking and solving imaginary problems in class.

Teaching is an imitation of life. Curiosity, which motivates us to search, discover, find out, test, examine, is important for professional advancement and improvement, but above all for personal growth. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it revives a man every day, it moves and motivates them. Without intellectual curiosity and learning, a person's world narrows and shrinks. Feeding your curiosity means providing food for the spirit, and then – of course – for the body as well. Voltaire said: " Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need."

I would also conclude by paraphrasing Voltaire's words: we must never stop cultivating our garden.