World Learning’s SIT TESOL Certificate Course – Week Three: Extended Reflection on Classroom

PracticeTitle: Encountering Myself As a Teacher Through

Reflection.

Trainee: Darzeé Irazema Mendieta Reñazco

El INVU de Peñas Blancas, Alajuela, Costa RicaJanuary 2019

ESSAY # 3Learning about English, Teaching, and

Teaching English.

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” ― John Dewey

Through reflecting on this week, I have discovered that my learning of the English language has increased a lot and that continue absorbing knowledge of teaching and teaching English, but more than that, continue reflecting on it, will give me the opportunity to grow as a teacher and to create more action plans for the sake of my students’ learning. In the present esssy I am going to write on my learning about English, teaching, and teaching English

During this week, I noticed that the English language involves more than content, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, patterns, and more. English has to do with the connection we make with our learners; the way we talk to them and they talk to us, the personal stories they tell us, the difficulties they go through. The English language has to do with the observation we do, the way we try not to make judgements in the classroom, but to make decisions based on facts we observe. I have also learned that English is about embracing my culture and sharing it by always respecting other people’s feelings and pacings. The English language is embracing people’s culture by making it my own and being open and willing to accept it and unifying it with mine whenever I am ready. The English language is a way to help, share, geeting to know about, how, onseself, and why things happen in people’s minds, countries, regions, or communities. This week was eye opening to me, but the most interesting and useful was that I realized that I am a person who loves embracing and respecting people’s culture and ways of being by being tolerant, by listening to them, by respecting, by cohabiting, by learning from them, by embracing them, by not judging, by letting them be, and by offering my help or thoughts only when they want to or ask for it.

I would love to incorporate the 4 knowings to teach more culture in my lessons. I want to do this because I believe that in order to have a sense of community, in order to embrace other cultures, and in order to give an opinion/criterion about the sociopolitical situation that is currently happening in my country, students need to be empowered in terms of our roots, our history, and our traditions. It is crucial to implement the 4 knowings in order for students to reflect upon their personal actions and actions of others in order to have peace and to have a healthy community in our country. I personally feel that this will be a great start for me in the classrooms once I come back to my country.

In terms of the themes I chose for this week from Learning-Centered language teaching, I decided to go with cooperation, materials, and task design. When it comes to cooperation, it has been a key factor for me. This because before I am teaching my lessons, especifically when I have been preparing for materials, I have received the help of my peers and friends, especially Vlad, Ana, Angie, Gaby, Angelica, and Nathalie. Angie would always give me her computer and her printer. Ana would always give me

flashcards, paper, speakers, and colors. Vlad would help me organize the room along with Gaby, they even helped me print my stuff. Angelica would always calm me down and meditate. She would ask me to think about my son and a special place. And last but not least, my sweet Nathalie, who was always there helping me cut the flashcards, write the posters, and bring me food whenever I was at her house working hard at night. I am completely sure that without their help, cooperation and love, I wouldn’t have been able to perform in the same way. Added to this, it is crucial to mention that I never argued, I never had to ask anyone to do something, it amazed me how all these feelings of encouragement and the desire of supporting me were innate in my peers. I still remember Angie telling me “We are on the same boat”. I still remember all of us saying: Today it’s Darzee, Angelica, and Vlad’s turn to teach, so it is our turn (Angie and Gaby) to do the community builder and arrange the classroom. And viceversa! It was and it is very touching. A hug, a word, a piece of their time, all of that I will carry in my heart for ever. Whenever I think about materials, I believe I am very resourceful. I love implementing different types of materials that are strictly connected to my students’ learning styles. However, I have learned here that simple is very good too. And that I could use less paper by using realia or my students’ bodies; hands, movements, and feet. I will definitely implement that in my future lessons by reading new ideas or new types of materials I may use. In terms of task-based activities, something that I found useful is giving the task before the text. It helps the students’ learning when they know exactly what they have to do first before giving the text to them. Also, I believe that designing or giving the appropriate time to design a task is essential to have a successful class from the learning process perspective. Reading, observing, analyzing, and processing all the examples we were provided in books, in lessons given by trainers, in lessons given by my peers, in the feedback I received on my own lessons, and even in reflecting on my own lessons are crucial aspects that I must and want to continue doing to learn and design better tasks in my future lessons.

I would like to discuss now how my experience has been in terms of Teaching English. Especifically in aspects like “Meaning-form-use”, “ECRIF”, “PDP”, “RAP”, “What I have learned bout myself as a teacher?”, and “A few important things I learned from my peers these past two weeks”. When I started creating the Language Analysis taking into consideration Meaning-form-use, I have to be honest and say that I didn’t find it useful, it was actually the only one thing I thought it was not useful from the course. However, when I received the first feedback from Roger and I analyzed it, there was one part where I could see that not giving the meaning to the students hindered their learning. It was from that specific moment that I understood that my knowledge and my reflection towards the meaning-form-use of the target vocabulary or target structure is extremely important in the process of thinking how to convey them during the class in order for the students to be successful. Thinking about ECRIF, I just have to say that I love this framework. I must admit that I feel more comfortable

using this framework than PDP. Why? I guess because I feel that whenever I plan and teach using ECRIF, my objective is more specific and the classes flow in a much better way. Or probably it is because I have known the framework since 2015 and I took the risk to apply it since then in my jobs in Nicaragua and in Colombia. I even took the risk to give a workshop about it in Colombia. With PDP I just feel that I do not manage the framework well and that I might need more time, more reading, more examples, more research, more sample lessons, and more experience in teaching it in order for me to feel comfortable. I HAVE WORK TO DO THEN. I remember being extremely nervous in the two lessons I taught and I am sure it was because I did not feel confident with using the framework in my lessons. My only question now would be, could I teach listening and reading with ECRIF? How? With RAP I just learned so much!! Pronunciation was one of the aspects I would run away from when planning my lessons. Seeing Nico teaching that lesson with this amazing framework, encourage me to plan lessons in the future to try it out and helping my students improve their pronunciation. Also, looking at the possible activities we can implement, which are a lot by the way, made me realize that I have been reluctant to reading and learning more about pronunciation! ANOTHER T4T after I go! LOVE IT!

Now, what have I learned about myself as a teacher? WOW! This question goes to my heart, mind, and soul. And connects with all the things that have happened in my life since last April when I moved to Colombia due to the sociopolitical situation my country was and is going through. I will just say that my biggest learning as a teacher is that through my reflections of all of these weeks I could notice that the thoughts I had before coming here, I will put them into practice, and the fears I had are gone! I feel that I must give myself the opportunity to become a teacher trainer, to get a Marter’s, and to help my community. And I will do it! I am ready to take the risk and to learn more!

When I talk about my peers, I get a little bit emotional. I will especifically talk about Angie, Vlad, Angelica, and Gaby. I learned from Vlad that building rapport and making students feel comfortable with making mistakes increases students’ learning. From Angelica I learned that planning is not always about using a lot of resources, planning is also having a simple and succesful lesson with a small amount of materials. Also, I learned that having self-control and being present with students is the key to a successful lesson. From Angie and Gaby I learned that listening and being open to feedback will always make you grow as a teacher. Being present in the peers’ lessons and feedback from trainers are the stairs to our growth.

I believe that my strengths as a teacher are always thinking about the best for my learners, being present in the class, observing them, getting to know them, respecting my planning process and taking the time to carefully plan, being resourceful, being open to feedback, sharing my ideas with peers, being a risk taker,

not being a complainer, being intuitive, being reflective, being out of my comfort zone, being always hungry for learning, being tolerant, avoiding conflict, having soft skills, being always positive, and being always willing to embrace my students’ emotions to make them my own. In terms of challenges, I believe that I should rest more, stress less, reduce my teacher talking time, read more about task-based activities, do something about neurodiverse students, do more research, help my community, concept check more, get to know my students better, and focus more on facts that on evaluations I make. The connections I am currently making between workshop, lesson planing, teaching, and feedback sessions is that it is essential to continue attending, doing, and reflecting on all of them to grow as a teacher. Another connection is the one that I mention above, I would love to become a teacher trainer. I would love to take a next step in my professional and personal life.

To conclude, the reflection about learning about English, teaching, and teaching English is essential to grow as a person and teacher. And I feel that I have the responsibility to continue growing.

DAPA # 1 DESCRIBE THE

The first PDP lesson I taught in the TESOL Course was focused on reading through communication. My students had to demonstrate understanding of the text “Eating in/Eating out conversation at a restaurant” by answering from 3 to 4 specific questions. It was a hot night and I was very nervous. There were 14 students in the room and 2 trainers being trained who were observing my class. Also, 4 participants that are my classmates were taking notes too. There was a semicircular seating arrangement, my students were in groups of 3 and there was also a pair. They were all sitting, there was a table assigned for each group, the environment was very tranquil. The students were interacting and I heard Alejandra telling Walter that she liked the class and resources. In the pre-stage, specifically in the clarifying activity of my lesson, the students had to match the support vocabulary with words, pictures, and phrases. The support vocabulary was order, comes with, choice of, I’ll have, bottled, grilled, and roast. For the majority of the support vocabulary, there were pictures to match with. However, there were the two following phrases that also had to be match with the support vocabulary; “The act of electing or deciding one option between two or more possibilities” and “I will order”. I was standing in front of the students and I was just observing them and listening to them speak freely. I just stepped back to listen and observe. I also congratulated them along they were doing their matching. All of the students were speaking and communicating. By that moment, I was very happy.It was in the clarifying activity where my moment happened. When the students started doing the exercise, I saw that only 3 of 5 tables were able to do it, meaning that 5 students couldn’t match all the vocabulary, specifically the definitions and phrases. The rest of the students did it and in the peer checking, the students who hadn’t been able to match made the changes and I saw that they were able to clarify the vocabulary. This is a clear and detailed description of a specific moment! You give helpful background details to paint the picture, and include details of what you/students/peers do and say.

ANALYZE PLAN ACTIONINTERPRE

T

GENERALIZE

It was helpful for me as a teacher to see how important it was to provide students with the opportunity to TPS because I could make sure they all clarified the support vocabulary in the end. Also because it allowed me to make the decision to move on to the next activities. This is a clear interpretation with a helpful explanation why learning was helped.

When teachers provide students with the opportunity to TPS, they may be able to observe and assess their students’ learning. This might not only allow them to make reflection in action but also to make decisions in action.

Absolutely!

In my future planning, I will definitely continue implementing TPS after every activity I do in order for me to be able to assess and make decisions based on this reflection in action.

A specific and achievable action plan.

It helped my learning to provide a matching exercise not only with pictures, but also with a definition and a synonym because it made me realize that breaking the idea of matching with only pictures is helpful for students since they get out of their mechanical or traditional way of learning.

When teachers provide students with the opportunity to do a matching exercise in groups or pairs in which there are more than pictures to match with; synonyms or definitions, students might be able to develop matching taking skills that have a higher level of complexity.

Interesting idea. I too think it’s important to vary these activities up.

In my future lessons, I will continue providing students with matching exercises. However, I am planning to do this by including not only pictures to match with, but maybe 1 definition and 1 synonym. I will also ask them to TPS while doing this types of exercises.

It hindered my learning as a teacher to create a matching exercise with 1

Teachers might not be able to assess their students’ skills nor learning to take mixed matching exercises (pictures,

Next time I will make sure that I provide students with a matching exercise that has pictures, definitions and

synonym and 1 definition that were too difficult for 5 students because I was not able to see if having a simple mixed matching exercise (pictures, definition, and synonym) could have been helpful for all the students’ learning.

definitions, and synonyms) if the definitions and synonyms have a high level of complexity.

synonyms that have the appropriate level of complexity. I am planning to do this by using words and synonyms they have studied before or a dictionary with basic definitions.

Another aspect that hindered my learning as a teacher was the fact that I just observed them and didn’t provide them clues because that didn’t allow me to see if with support in this precise exercise they might have been able to do it.

Teachers might not be able to assess or see if students who are struggling with a mixed matching exercise are indeed able to do it if they do not provide support or clues in the moment. I can see that you are striving to stay in-tune with your learners, and that your interest in seeing student learning really shows with these interpretations/generalizations.

In the future, I will definitely support my students while they are doing the mixed matching exercise. I am planning to do this by providing one or two clues in the moment I see them struggling.

SUMMARIZING PARAGRAPH # 3

This week’s experience has been eye-opening and unforgetful because it has given me the opportunity to explore and reflect upon the emotions I have towards learning about English, Teaching,

and Teaching English. It was amazing for me to realize how much the English language can impact our lives in terms of restructuring ourselves as human beings, and building a community.

Dear Darzeé,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and in-depth reflection on yourself as a teacher from the past week. You’ve given me a wide open window into your most meaningful moments and takeaways. I can see that you are truly hungry for learning, and that you are taking in as much as possible from your students, peers, trainers, workshops, reflections, and so on. Something that especially struck me was how the Four Knowings have impacted you, and how the teaching of culture in the classroom and fostering a curiosity for and understanding of one’s history, roots, and traditions will be one of your tools to improve the state of your country and communities upon returning. Hearing stories such as this helps to fulfill me as a trainer, knowing that the knowledge, skills, frameworks and techniques we share on this course will be put to good use. Thank you for sharing this!

Regarding your DAPA, you did an excellent job. You have a clear sense of writing objective Descriptions, and creating well-connected Interpretations/Generalizations/Action Plans that are based on descriptive evidence you include in the Description. I hope writing these DAPAs have served to slow down your thinking as you reflect and see specific moments from multiple angles, while thinking of ways in which you can maximize learning with your action plans. Good luck with your portfolio!

Best,Chad