Here we share with you the video clip that I used for my talk on SLB at the recent Innovate ELT conference.

Taken from Pedro Olea’s 1992 movie El Maestro de Esgrima (The Fencing Teacher), the clip is set in 1868 and centres on Don Jaime, the teacher of the title, who is visiting Don Agapito, a colleague he hasn’t seen for a while.

The issues raised are so pertinent to the situation of the EFL teacher in the private sector today that in our translation we could have named it The English Teacher. But instead, we’ve gone with The Guillotine.

Even if you are a proficient Spanish speaker/listener, we ask that you keep the subtitles activated!

To find out about our interpretation of this clip and how we work at SLB, please come along to our information session on Saturday May 21st in Barcelona. There’s a great teacher-training workshop on after it, too! Reservation required – see the post in the link for details.

Finally, a shout out to the excellent Spanish radio programme, Carne Cruda, which uses part of the guillotine dialogue in their opening sequence.

About the author : Neil McMillan

Current president of SLB and a freelance teacher, writer and teacher educator. Course director on the SLB TBLT course. Author and collaborating professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

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