My Teaching Philosophy

My Teaching Philosophy

My Teaching Purpose

            When I turned six years old, my parents moved to Costa Rica.  It was their home country, but to me it was a foreign and strange land.  I was from Brighton, Sussex where my parents had studied both their masters and doctorate degrees.  Brighton was the only home I had known, and English my language.  When my parents had moved to England, years before my birth, they had both decided to only speak in English to each other because my father was fluent, but my mother was a struggling, beginning English student.  They had decided that the only way my mother would be able to get her English strong enough to defend her thesis, full-immersion was there choice.  As their studies ended, my family packed up their bags and I was soon surrounded by Spanish for the first time in my life.  It is hard to describe the strange feelings I felt, the best way I can describe it is the feeling of being in a dark cave and the walls closing in on one.  I remember feeling a deep sense of loss and sadness.  I felt extreme loneliness.  I do not recall this, but my parents said I stopped speaking.  I did not even speak English, I just went mute.  I was a child who spoke, read and wrote English, but the situation was so amazingly overwhelming that I only read silently.  Eventually I started speaking again, months later.  I started speaking both Spanish and English perfectly and smoothly.  However, as a child I always felt that I was not myself when I spoke Spanish, I was this odd version of myself whom could not find the perfect words I sought out. 

            We moved to the United States in my teenage years.  When I turned fifteen I started fulfilling my high school community service hours.  I started volunteering at the local public elementary school.  Originally, I was going to offer tutoring to the children that needed it, but I naturally ended up having all the Latin children that were struggling with their English.  I worked with them with a passion, and they progressed so quickly.  It was the highlight of my day, and I found my life´s purpose.  When I graduated from high school I became an education student right away.  I am currently finishing my graduate studies, a proud candidate to a Masters in English with an emphasis in English as a Second Language.  I love teaching because I know there is a huge number of students that need to learn English due to different circumstances.  These students are in a complex and vulnerable place.  I am proud of being a teacher among the huge army of international teachers supporting ESL students.  My short-term or immediate goals are to be the best English teacher I can be every day of my teaching experience.  My long-term goals are to travel the world and teach English and learn other languages as well.  I hope to have a long career in teaching English, after all it is a beautiful language in which each student may find a new and unique voice.

My Teaching Style

My biggest concern as a teacher is to make sure my students are able to communicate as soon as they feel ready to.  As a young child facing the challenge of moving to a country and having to speak another language than my own, I understand the painful feeling of separation and isolation.  I do not wish to see my students struggle unnecessarily with feelings similar to my own.  Thus, my greatest approach to my Teaching English as a Second Language has been through implementing the Communicative Approach in my class.  I am very respectful of a possible silent period in my students English learning process.  However, I do work in the classroom in a style that promotes communication and production.  Another important approach I find important and relevant is the affective approach.  It is important to care for student´s comfort level in the classroom and allow a positive environment that permits the student to make mistakes and feel supported.  Ironically, I find the Reading Approach to be important too.  Many students of ESL have academic dreams and goals.  It is necessary for them to be able to survive testing such as the IELTS, TOEFL, etc.  These students need solid reading and writing proficiency to pass tests and survive independently in the academic world.

I find it very important to use these approaches from a merely communicative need and from an academic excellence need.  Although implementing these approaches may seem contradictory and similar to a huge swing in the educational spectrum, it seems logical and necessary to apply both in the classroom.  I like to provide the opportunity to face conversational challenges as well as academic language proficiency.  The idea of having language be meaningful to the ESL student is the idea that I like most of the Communicative approach.  The Reading Approach is very useful when it is urgent for the student to start producing academically, when already in the school system.  The Reading Approach is also useful during the student´s silent period.

Although I am prepared to teach English at all levels, I have been blessed to focus on the younger students in my ESL work during the last few years.  I have been working with preschool and elementary school students.  My teaching style focused on communication and reading skills best meets my student´s needs as they face the necessity to communicate and become integrated to the school´s academic rhythm.  As their English classes face their most pressing needs and immediate challenges, the students may be motivated in these English classes as a ticket to integration and assimilation.

My Teaching Techniques

Which techniques do you use in lesson planning or teaching?

My teaching techniques are quite by the book.  I try to apply as many good pedagogical practices as I can.  I proceed with very detailed and creative lesson planning, including a list of alternate ideas just in case my original plan does not work.  I find that well developed lesson plans are my key to a calm and easy class.  I feel more confident and as a teacher I can focus more on the students and less on my performance as a teacher because I already have a class map in my head.

One of my most important techniques is a fun warm up exercise.  Dynamic and attention-grabbing warm ups are very important especially for my youngest students that are challenged by distractions.  It is important that I test prior knowledge because my students have very strong English skills since they have studied English as a second language in school since the students were very young.  However, every now and then I will be surprised by areas that need to be strengthened and worked on.  My students are Costa Rican from bilingual schools, and even though they have excellent English language skills, I need to actively work on lowering their affective filter because at times they are too shy to speak.

How much time do you spend teaching and how much time do you spend allowing students to practice language? Why?

The amount of time I allot allowing students to practice language in the classroom has been an area that I have worked on significantly during these last few years.  I studied under the traditional lecture-based approach throughout my high school and early college years.  My initial lack of expertise as a teacher led me to be very controlling in the classroom.  I would lecture and model and correct and lecture again.  I had a terrible time allowing students to be independent and to make mistakes.

As I have gained experience and confidence as a teacher and have been corrected by amazing mentors and school supervisors, I am now proud to say that most of my class is practice based in student led activities.  I force myself to only instruct and model during the warm up and initial stages of class development.

I work teaching 60-minute classes, I try to only teach about ten minutes or so.  After that I guide and walk through the class as my students face different ESL activities.  I have discovered that this is definitely the best method since students need to practice an enormous amount of time, otherwise they will not acquire the language and remember what has been taught.

How do you motivate students on a daily basis?

I try to maintain my students motivated on a daily basis quite a lot because some of my students are as young as preschool age and they loose interest quickly.  I am as animated and as positive as possible.  I am particularly verbally expressive when a child uses English suddenly and surprisingly. 

I have many reward systems of goals achieved, for example, my students earn stickers on a reward chart as they progress on their reading skills.  When their reward chart is filled with stickers they can get to pick a brand-new book from a donated collection of new books that I have in class.

Do you use warm language, teacher talk, language learning strategies, etc? If so, explain how you use them in class.

I work with very young students (4 to 17 years old) they have had a constant and disciplined exposure to English with an early approach to bilingual education.  However, they are generally shy and insecure about their English.  It is important that I in turn be disciplined as a teacher and speak to them using warm language and encourage with constant (but sincere sounding verbal cues).  I speak English always opting for a complete immersion approach.

My school works with the Multiple Intelligence Theory Method from Howard Gardner.  It is a multi-faceted teaching and learning approach which takes an integral view into the classroom experience providing multiple instructional approaches in the classroom so that the student can experience the same content exploring through diverse abilities such as the kinesthetic, musical, logical-mathematical exploration, etc.  This results in a varied and active class that varies from physical games to profound analysis of poetry.

What are some warm up/guided practice/independent practice/assessment activities you use? Explain how you integrate these activities into your lesson plans and how they are beneficial to the students.

My warm activities are always active and kinesthetic.  I use song and dance always to start my class.  With the younger students this is very important because the stability of having a start up routine is very valuable to them emotionally and to establish discipline.  I begin with the students in the center of the classroom in our “warm-up circle”.  We have several songs and activities that we do daily.  An alphabet song, number count, etc, and other lesson specific warm ups after that are specifically aligned with the lesson plan of the day.  Usually this segment of my class will end with an activity that is calm and soothing, such as a story read out loud.  This is important so that when we transition to instruction and modelling the students are ready, calm and perceptive.

I wish I could claim here that my independent practice activities are the result of my brilliant and creative mind, but alas I cannot!  I am a careful study of the generous work of other professors before me, that have shared ideas through textbooks and digital platforms.  The uniqueness of my work though is in the meticulous adaptation that I do to each idea that I borrow, I analyze my classes and students and transform each activity into a tiny little original to respond to the students´ peculiarities and educational needs.  This is very beneficial to the students because my work is developed for them and the specific objectives designed in a rigorous exercise of analysis prior and after the class.

How do you evaluate and assess students? Why?

My students are very young, so much so that many are not able to produce examinations or any form of traditional assessments.  I work with checklists where I mark off observable behaviors.  I also work with a detailed anecdotal record of each student, commenting on their development at least once every month throughout the term (more if the student has presented the need for more individualized attention).