MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

ABOUT ME

I am Mayra. I am 26 years old. I am from Ecuador. I live in Riobamba. I am a teacher. I work as a teacher for 3 years. I started working with students of high school from Second Bachelor. Now I am working with kids of third grade, eighth and nineth grade. I work at Unidad Eductiva "Nuestro Mundo"

MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

        MY MOTIVATIONS FOR TEACHING

What motivated you to be a teacher? What are your motivations for teaching?

Teachers are admirable people because they teach with their hearts; we are strongly passionate in our jobs in our classes. All students are white papers where we can create different things and with time, we can keep in their hearts.

A beautiful experience that I remember, when I was at high school in a tenth grade. I completely did not like English. I cannot speak, I did not like to listen English audios because I did not understand anything but that year I met a wonderful English teacher. She was very strict in classes and I had bad grades, while the time was passing, she realized that I did not like and did not understand anything about English. I think the main point was that I did not like English. One day she prepared some activities for the class. She surprised me in all the aspects. She did games she performed some oral activities where I felt secure of myself. Until that day, I like English. The most incredible thing at ending the scholar year was that she talked to me and She told me “Mayra I think in the future you will be an English teacher” I just laughed because I did not trust in their words.

 “There is nothing better than having one of my students realize they’re stronger and more resilient than they ever thought possible.” – Karen W.

“To help students learn to think for themselves.” – Lesley T.

My motivation for teaching are my students. All days I can see them, we learn together day by day. We smile; we combine learning our topics and talking about what is happening nowadays. We play, interact the most beautiful aspect we know ourselves.  I like to be affective with them; I apply the academic curriculum and find ways to apply it practically in real world situations. I want to prepare successful students to have better opportunities in their future. 


   THE METHODS I BELIEVE ARE THE BEST

What is the best teaching method for learning English?

                                    

According to academic research, linguists have demonstrated that there is not one single best method for everyone in all contexts, and that no one teaching method is inherently superior to the others.

Also, it is not always possible or appropriate to apply the same methodology to all learners, who have different objectives, environments and learning needs.

The methods I use with my students are : 

Each method has a different focus or priority; they help me to work with my students in different ways where we can achieve our goals. Some students like to listen to songs, or watch videos and I can apply Audio- Lingual method. When students do not know the meaning of words or the whole information of some readings, they like to use dictionary to look for meaning. In other classes with my students in high school, we can apply the direct method because they can associate the meaning directly in English. In addition, the method that I use more times in classes is the Communicative Language Teaching because students like to interact each other asking questions about their personal information; they ask me some questions about my personal. Professional information, they love to play games they love to sing songs and interact through a real environment.

According to Krashen, people have two ways of developing their skills in the Second Language Acquisition, by using the language for real communication. The acquisition and learning process;

Acquisition	Learning
Implicit, subconscious	Explicit, conscious
Inofrmal situations	Formal situations
Stable order of acquisition	Simple to complex learning

The learner hears comprehensible input; however some of it is filtered out by an ‘Affective Filter’ set by preconceptions about language etc. This input is converted by a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) into Acquired Knowledge; i.e. Krashen builds in a Chomskyan black-box that automatically acquires language and he does not specify it in more detail. In the actual production of speech, seen on the right of the figure, Acquired Knowledge is used to produce utterances and any Learned Knowledge that the person has acquired by other means is used to Monitor this process or the Output itself.

MY TEACHING GOALS, METHODS AND STRATEGIES

·         My teaching goals are focus in the development of my students.

·         I want my students do their best work, taking challenges and create their knowledge by doing and practicing. 

·         I want to help to increase their knowledge using some strategies and different methods so they will be better in the future.

·         One of the main goals is to help students figure out who they are and how they can be of service to their community. As teachers, we need to help students understand the social responsibilities of their field and the social impact of their choices.

·         Once you have helped students find something they want to say, you need to help them find a way to say it. As teachers, give students the skills to communicate effectively and the confidence to express what they think.

 ·         Sometimes some phrases, some grammatical structures are forgotten, but  students and teacher will carry them with the intellectual skills, so teacher needs to help them develop, from critical to creative thinking.

·         Inspire your students. As teacher is so important, prepare the class in advanced looking for student´s interests and their abilities. It is important to provide support to challenge academic demands.

TEACHING METHODS

The method that we can use with our students depend in the activity we are going to develop. It is important to read the information to talk about it in the class. Analyze the information, discuss with the whole class. The method that teachers use in each class depends in the activities they are going to use and the assessment that will take place at the end of each class. Teachers can use different methods according student´s interests, age, level.

•Common daily activities in natural way.

•Reading, watching movies create reasons to have conversations naturally. 

•Real conversation activities.

•Meaningful tasks in activities.

•Activities should be selected depending on how well the student is involved in the language.

TEACHING STRATEGIES

We can apply many strategies with our students. It is so important to know that each strategy does not work with all the students. We can use different strategies and evaluate what is the best to put in practice with them.

As teacher, I use different strategies to develop my student´s knowledge.

Discussion. There is a variety of ways to stimulate discussion. For example, present to the class a reading about an interest topic. Practice with them. Let analyze in context after that give some information related to the topic and ask students to talk about what they think about the reading. What is the principal point? What do they understand in the readings? If they do not some words, write on the board and analyze with the whole group the meaning in context.

Active Learning. It lets students to talk and listen in the classes.  Organize the group in small groups, simulations, role playing, and other activities, it is relevant that all of which require students to apply what they are learning. Use the classroom as a good environment for them. Change students each class, or move their sits, organize the class, let students work in the floor but teacher should monitor all the time because it will happen that they do other different kind of things.

Cooperative Learning. Cooperative Learning is a systematic pedagogical strategy that encourages small groups of students to work together for the achievement of a common goal. I like to work as a competition. Form groups and give them all the rules about the activity. Challenge them to win the competition. It is important that each member of the group participate in the activity, with these activities students will develop their skills. ( listening, speaking, reading and writing). At the end give them a prize they love the challenges.

Integrating Technology. Today, technology is an important part of a student's education. Integrating technology into a course curriculum when appropriate is proving to be valuable for enhancing and extending the learning experience for faculty and students. Students will use computers to develop different tasks or maybe listen to specific details. Using social networks in a good way is an advantage for students because they chat with their friends, chat with people of other countries. I recommend for these activities to organize the class in a group chat where they can use only the second language (English). It is important that teacher use and administrate the group to know if students are doing the activities. 

HOW MY TEACHING IS CONSISTENT WITH THESE GOALS ?

I think my teaching is consistent because we can achieve our goals doing different activities that mentioned before. 

Students learn a new language through playful activities, interacting each other and practicing by themselves.

 PERSONAL GOALS THAT HAVE SET MYSELF AS A TEACHER

·         My personal goals as a teacher are:

•          Learn more; prepare myself in advanced to teach my students in a way they like to learn.
•          Read more information about methods and strategies, which help me to interact with my students.
•          Create a good environment in the classes doing different activities where students feel more comfortable.
•          Teach my students values, it is so important students know about life, about the problems that we have around the word. They have to be conscious that they are the new generation and they will do better to the other generations do in better ways.
•         Know my students, talk about their feelings, their emotions, some teenagers face problems or difficulties but as teachers, I think it is important to let know that they are not alone.
•       It is important to integrate all the people in student´s learning process. It will be helpful that the administrators of each educational institution give all the facilities to work with them, another point is parents. They need to be integrated in the activities students develop and talk about the student´s process.

         Krashen, S. (1979), 'The Monitor Model for second language acquisition.

      Krashen, S. (1981), Second Language Acquisition and Second Language             Learning,Pergamon