MY TEACHER'S  PHILOSOPHY

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Since I started this path of the teacher training course, two of the foundations that I consider to be fundamental for promoting teaching and learning effectively are respect and interaction. The former is the most significant moral value  to be the key that allows the rest of what happens inside the classroom. 

If respect remains strong between learners and teacher, the rest will come smoothly and progressively. Apart from social respect, learning respect is also essential, that is to say, respecting our students' way of learning and their language needs are also essential for a successful learning and teaching environment. Personally, I truly believe that social respect and learning respect are the open doors to everything that comes next.

       What I mean by interaction is not only about the theory learnt in didactics, it also implies using the language  beyond teaching.  Interacting with them goes much beyond using the language for a specific activity. A teacher should also provide learners the language to use it to express their views, understand their emotions into words, describe their daily life anecdotes and experiences.  

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"We do not learn poetry because it is cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for"

                I always think of this quote like the way I consider the  English language to be taught at schools.  English is more than grammar and words;  it  is a channel that transmits  a culture, a history,  a new way of expression.  If you teach it with passion, emotion, happiness while doing activities, then motivation, enthusiasm, and joy to learn a second language will start to bloom. 

                         Above all the theory we could obtain in every university we train ourselves as teachers, we should not forget that we are working with human beings,  who go through different stages of development which are difficult to deal with, plus learning a foreign language. That mastery of dealing with students is understood through the analytical premises of the theory but the practice also shows us a complete new overview.

                          During my working years and my studying years, I have always considered Louanne Johnson for  my teaching philosophy.   She became an inspirational teacher to look up to since she said once that interaction is key for teaching and learning to function properly. Keeping her ex-marine values, she taught troublesome students to be better people in life and she also helped them to pursuit their dreams no matter how hard their realities were, she made her classroom be their shelter.  Every year, in every course, I do my best to do the same like she did when she started teaching.  

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  THE MOST IMPORTANT TEACHER'S  RESPONSIBILITIES

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   I have created a list for the responsibilities that an English teacher should keep in mind, thinking of  the components that I have learnt from Sharp (2004) and Read (2015) about creativity.

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1. Teachers should be IMAGINATIVE (Picturing our students, their personalities, their behaviours, their language needs, their social and personal needs, and their interests in our minds. Imagination implies a broad spectrum, such as: imagining a context to organize the lessons, using imagination to create a story suitable for their age and level, and imagining if there could be challenges or difficulties during a resolution of the activities)

2. Teachers should be ORIGINAL  (Being innovative from one lesson to the other, not only in the  activity type but also the resources to implement for the students. As substitute, I have seen the same material in one school and the other, repetitive tasks and students only develop just two skills, reading and writing. For me, a teacher's originality implies to be unique, to present the language in more than two macroskills, to look for other resources apart from textbooks, to vary the class from one lesson to the next).

3. Teachers should OFFER CHOICE (The activities that teachers plan should be flexible, allowing students to have a choice. By this way, they also develop not only language skills but also their type of intelligence. As Gardner once said, sometimes one or two intelligences can stand out from the rest and that  happens when there  are choice and variety in the activities proposed by the teacher).

4. Teachers should EXPLORE MULTIMODALITY in their activity designs (As Kness (2003) stated that children are sing makers of the language, they use their resources available in their social context. By integrating children's senses in their learning experience, language learning becomes more meaningful and memorable in their development. Teachers have to consider this component to sustain motivation over time and to give their students variety in the activities)

5. Teachers should keep in mind instances to FOSTER LEARNING THROUGH PLAY (Learning through play and dramatic play gives children a natural environment for learning a language, reinforcing their imaginative skills, their social skills, their sense of well-being and their self confidence. Play offers them opportunities to develop their interpersonal and bodily-kinaesthetic skills). 

6. Teachers should provide EFFECTIVE SCAFFOLDING STRATEGIES (As students transition from receiving direct instruction from the teacher towards independent problem-solving, they need to have clear and instructional scaffolding guidance, which is essential for children to develop skills that will help them lead their own learning).

7. Teachers should foster LEARNER'S AUTONOMY (The effectiveness of the scaffolding strategies can lead to have autonomous students. In my case, I had first grade students in my practicum, very young learners. However their age, there were moments that, after the scaffolding strategy was made, they asked me to do the activity on their own and to be checked once they finished it. They already knew that mistakes are part of learning and they did not feel sad when they made a spelling mistake. On the contrary, they got more curious about how the language functioned as regards spelling and pronunciation)

8. Teachers should be an EMOTIONAL SUPPORT for their learners (Teachers should not forget that this is a humanitarian profession. Sometimes, we should stop the lesson for a moment to talk to them, see if there are problems inside the group, check how they feel. Apart from their parents, we are their third adult in their surrounding context, the educator who guides them to shape their personalities and to build their own identity.  It is highly important what we tell them to do,  to behave, to be a better person since they will remember forever in their lives).

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MY THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES IN WHICH I HAVE FORGED MY TEACHING

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        First of all, the educators of early childhood education that I have been forging my teaching are Frederich Froebel, Rudolf Steiner, some of Montessori's pedagogical principles and some of the proposals by John Dewey. From Froebel, I always try to plan my lessons based on his methodology of "action-play-work" with Vygotsky's communicative approach as theoretical framework  in mind (Having in mind language for communication, peer interaction and the ZPD to foster autonomy). Moreover, I base my teaching on Steiner's principles of cultivating independent thinking, and on Dewey's idea of the teacher's role as a guidance and provider of contexts, where theory and practice are required. From Montessori, I highlight her principles of fostering love, active participation and cooperation of the student's role.

        From each of them, I have considered different aspects, such as Froebel's organization for lesson planning, his metholodogy; Steiner's principles of creating suitable settings and using imagination and creativity in every lesson and activity; and Monstessori's ideas of love, respect, learner's choice and the sensitive period premise when I shape my methodology of work, planning and activity design. 

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                                                          MY TEACHING CONTEXT 

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          Apart from achieving the theory,  my experience has given me wisdom to see that every classroom is  completely different from another, like a solar system,  in which  each student is a planet on its own and we are their suns that feed them with knowledge, culture, values and ways of communicating their thoughts into words.

                 What I always  try to do  with my students is, firstly,  go happy to work to spread joy, interest, curiosity, entertainment and pleasure to learn the language.

               With my last year's third grade, in primary level, I invited them to explore their curiosity, discover new words by themselves through the games we played, answer their questions if they want to know more. Even though last year was a hard challenge because of the pandemic context, I found the way to make each of the lessons memorable, meaningful for their language needs and  their interests.

          With teenagers, I  try  to show them why learning  English is  useful in life, how they can use it in more than one situation, how they can express their arguments and ideas by using what they already know and the new language. Sometimes motivation is weak at the beginning of a year, but then it finds its course progressively.  Personally,  I try to adapt the different resources that  the theories about teaching and learning  have provided us with in the three theoretical didactics.

            During every year, there are always new challenges to face since not all groups respond the same. New techniques and new resources as well need to be selected according to the new group.  Besides, classroom rules should be changed from one year to the next, but asking for respect is my first premise when I set my foot inside a classroom.

       When I feel that the classroom atmosphere starts to settle down through reciprocal respect, the interaction with my students begins positively. Sometimes, mostly teenagers, they need a moment when I should play the parent's role, delivering speeches about life's struggles, speeches about dreams to pursuit, and daily conflicts they are dealing with . Learners feel much more confident to share their insecurities, their difficulties with the language and their inner conflicts with their context around them when those moments of interaction occur.

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                                                                 LEARNER'S CONTEXT

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During my  experience and  practicum, I noticed that motivation is a factor that tends to be at risk if we as teachers do not set a suitable language context for our learners, one interesting for them, and related to their realities. Now I understand the value and relevance of creating the context.

       In the case of very young learners, it is essential to create an imaginative and attractive  context, where the language is easier to comprehend its meaning and use first. Young children are not interested in the structure but they want to know the meaning and the use of a word for any situation that they will encounter later on. 

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During my practicum, I had thought that they could probably get bored since they continued working on the same topic with the teacher in charge after I finished my lesson. On the contrary, given that the context I had created was about two cartoons doing the same actions they daily perform, that was new for them and a new context to explore the vocabulary.

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           As regards difficulties, I identified that a few of the children still had problems with writing since their kindergarten level was mostly virtual rather than at school due to the pandemic crisis.

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         Besides this, the teacher had told me that they still had difficulties in reading and writing, however, they could recall the vocabulary and simple structures from chunks that they could remember from the stories and songs they had listened to and games they had played during this year. 

         

        Concerning participation, I tried to encourage all the children in the group to come to the board, either pointing at the visual aids, coming to me when they were working with the worksheets. I was glad that all of them could work with the activities designed and they could start to develop their autonomy after I illustrated them how to carry out the task, later, they completed it by themselves. 

          This first grade had great qualities as a group; they were collaborative with the ones who had more difficulties to finish an activity, they helped each other all the time. 

 

          Furthermore, I try to keep learners' interest and motivation high by using a variety of activites and to set a sense of surprise for the lesson first, I give them some clues as regards the theme of the lesson, so that they do not anticipate everything that they will carry out next.  When they have difficulties in structures, I try not to follow the  structural approach but more of the communicative one.

For example, with my primary students from last year, we made fortune tellers online, puzzles to order the phrases, online games from the Brisith council with an online timer to keep the lesson dynamic and funny to see which team could complete the task. By the end of a lesson, we checked the mistakes and I let them think for a moment to check those problems so that they could identity them without my constant help. 

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         By giving them instances to think for themselves, they could improve their independence and task-autonomy. That was a great achievement that most parents could notice in their sons at the end of the year; they felt that they were not constantly supporting them while doing a grammar activity or a vocabulary one. Also, I gave parents the chance to rewatch the contents of the lesson by a summary video in Spanglish so that it could be a useful tool for children and for them to guide them while working.                                               

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