Practice: Practice reflection

Practice: Practice reflection

Three months of my students practice passed. It is high time for a general reflection of what I saw and what I experienced.

My first thought is that I learned much more than I imagined a person can learn from observing and doing few microteachings. Before starting the practice and after two first days I was bored and couldn't see the purpose of this whole thing. I was convinced it'll be a lose of time rather than learning new skills. I mean, how can you learn if you don't physically practice your the skills needed, you just sit in the corner and observe. In my head it was boring. I admit that first few lessons I observed I didn't paid much attention.

Nevertheless, on the third day I came as non enthusiastic as I was before, but there were new situations going on on there lesson. I was told before that there is no "perfect lesson" and no two lessons are the same, but only then did I understand what this means. Suddenly, observing the same teacher on a Monday maths lesson with 6th graders in the same classroom was a brand new thing to me. Moreover, knowing the basics from observing the students and the teacher I was able to focus on the things actually taking place in the classroom. It opened my eyes as an observer.

Let's take one of the maths lessons for the example. As usually, the bell rang, I took a sit in the corner of the classroom and relaxed knowing I have 45 minutes of just sitting. After just few minutes I saw a teacher talking to a group of students, while the two sitting close to me started arguing. One of them took the others pen and didn't want to give it back. The teacher didn't notice anything. When they raised their voices she came closer, got very angry and decided to punch both of them. The boy whose pen was taken was very angry and didn't do anything till the end of the lesson, he just sat there with his arms crossed. As a third person in this situation I felt so sorry for the boy. I could understand the teacher as she didn't know the whole truth, but still I was amazed how things that we see can be different from how they really are.

This whole experience was a lesson of modesty to me as before I perceived myself as a good and patient observer. I was so wrong. My further conclusion is that I shouldn't assume that  I'm "this" or "that" good at anything, teaching for example. It's easier said than done, I guess I need to be very careful about all the processes and mechanisms in my brain to avoid giving untrue statements.

My other reflective thoughts are about the math teacher. In one of the previous posts I described her as not very competent and rather poor teacher. After seeing her ability to control the children after all and after experiencing micro teaching with the whole class I have much more respect for her. These are not easy kids, if some ever existed. Without her help my first micro teaching could have been a disaster. There was a group work and some students worked hard and the others just talked to each other. I told them few times to help their friends, they just nodded but when I moved on the situation was just the same. My mentor teacher talked to them in a way they could not continue talking. I think she used her knowledge about every student to make them work in a group. It takes a lot of effort and knowledge to do this.

To sum up, I find my practice experience precious even if the school, teachers or students has some drawbacks. I slowly learn to function in reality which is not all changeable. I learn how to adapt to a situation, people and environment, I see it as a highly important teacher's skill.

Practice: Reflective teacher

Practice: Reflective teacher

I would like to share with you my reflections as a teacher from the past few months. It was very active and busy time for me and very effective at the same time.

After hearing of Individual Learner Differences (ILD) there appeared new connections in my brain. It was strange moment of connecting some pieces which were completely separate before.

I suppose all researchers who try to investigate the ILD topic come across many obstacles during the process of research. There are few reasons like factors are inter-dependent, there are multiple ways to define L2 proficiency (written/ oral) and correlation between factors is not always known nor assumed. Probably there are much more impediments. In my world this means that researches can be done but it’s not possible to formulate true statements in this area of research. Even the name speaks for itself, how can we investigate individual issues wider that just by investigate the individual? Obviously, we can settle main and general terms like motivation which can be instrumental or integrative, extrinsic or intrinsic. But my point is, two instrumental motivations can be completely different from each other.

The problem I highlighted in previous paragraph makes me think of myself as an active teacher, a researcher- teacher whose job is not only to check the attendance and teach, but also observe and investigate my students. Every lesson should be treated as an opportunity to get a closer look at the students. After every meeting teacher is able to find out something new about at least one of the students. Just this tiny piece of information can help and make the difference for all the group. For example, if one student misbehaves on a lesson and the teacher notices that it might be caused by too high temperature in the classroom, he can easily change the heating settings and enable the student and all of his colleges to learn. In my opinion it’s highly important part of teacher’s work to take care of student’s needs pertinently to their age and abilities.

Looking back at historical approach towards motivation, which is main factor of the differences between learners, we can name three periods: social psychological (learner’s needs and attitude), cognitive- situated (view the goal, self- efficacy), process- oriented (focus on time). It’s hard to say that one of them or maybe some other is the right one. The most common perspective these days is socio- dynamic. It focuses on direct contact with L2 speakers, cultural interest and milieu. Wondering where this name came from, I perceive the adjective “dynamic” as one to describe the most important idea of looking at language learning.

While observing a lesson with young learners, “dynamic” can be one of the first words to come to mind. Every teacher can legitimate. This age group it’s a challenge to a teacher to get his head around few energetic, full of ideas and movement individuals. Conducting a lesson is more unpredictable in this case than with teenagers or young adults. In my practice I observe 5th and 6th grade and I would put them in the "young learners" group. On one maths lesson there was a boy who left the classroom and came back three times because of three different reasons. The teacher had to be very patient but also dynamic to cover his and other students needs. The other day on the history lesson students got so into topic unrelated to the lesson's topic that they discussed for five minutes until the teacher decided to stop them. That proofs they are still too young to be able to hold back from talking.

There is one more meaning of teaching L2 being “dynamic”. In the historical context, the new perspective is about giving language in present context. Each day brings new topic to talk about, not only with your relatives and friends, but on the news or on the lesson as well. This is one of the biggest advantages of teaching L2 for me. I can use the lesson not only to teach the theory and skills, but also, I can speak to my students about things that are really important because they form young people. If they don’t understand a political affair where someone did something wrong, I have the possibility to explain it and discuss it. What’s more, such activities make people think for themselves. Talking about a fresh, worldwide topic which wasn’t answered a lot yet gives students feeling that they can have different opinion, they can learn each other’s opinion, they can argue with their parents, to make long things short, the message is: your voice and opinion matters. I believe in raising up independent and clever generations able to be independent and reasonable. That may sound posh, it even does for me, still I truly trust it makes sense.

Practice: Teaching literacy

Practice: Teaching literacy

The topic of this post can be understood in various ways. During my studies at University of Warsaw  I found you can't precisely translate "literacy" to Polish. That may be the reason why most English teachers from Poland don't understand the term. It may seam if they teach the language they should not have any problem to understand the term. Unfortunately, some of them do.

In Polish literacy is defined as ability to read and write. That's extremely short. As I finished my first degree in special pedagogy I was taught for two years what these abilities are about. Without attending those lessons I'd perceive those as natural and easy to gain. Apparently, it's the opposite way. There are pedagogical therapists who are qualified to work with students with special needs or disabilities. When it comes to teaching a new language it's almost the same as when children learn how to read and write for the first time. That's why linguistic teachers should know as much as possible about teaching literacy.

How to evaluate teaching literacy

On my practice I tend to observe the lesson and look for elements of pedagogical therapy. One of its element is teaching literacy or specific elements of the issue. As far as I know simple reading or simple writing is not a good exercise, and these I see very often on the lesson. Still, there are some activieties beneficial but probably not intended and realized by the teacher.

After each history lesson students leave the classroom with full and complexed note from the topic. The note is completely given by the teacher but created in cooperation with the students. There are usually from three to five separate points, each written in easy language, length just right to understand and comprehend the sentence. I'd call it teaching literacy. The students are guided by the teacher. They speak about the topic using specific examples from the history (almost always shown by the pictures). Then they relate the topic to their personal experiences, with major help of the teacher. Afterwards the teacher begins to form the note on the board by putting the topic with capital letters on it. And very smoothly they together formulate each statement. At the end children copy the note to their notebooks.

Not always is teaching literacy so easy to spot. The above example is one of few visible and easy to evaluate. On my practice I tried to observe it on the maths lesson. Most suitable situations of all was the day when lesson's topic pertain to charts. The teacher explained the question few times while students got the worksheet in front of them. It looked almost as if she was showing a new type of a tool to communication. Children had to read the information from the graph, not from a couple of sentences as they usually do. Then they had to answer few questions about it, so there was the element of writing as well. The teacher talk to the students a little about the context of the graph and quality they can get from it.

Here, in my opinion it was too little time. It seemed to me as if the most important element was missing: put the activity into context and make it meaningful and close to the children. That's also the element left out by majority of teachers (issue I mentioned in the first paragraph).

I realize teaching literacy is highly difficult, as most of us, teachers, wasn't taught it as well. That means we need to learn it first and understand it fully. Only then can we start to learn how to teach.