Teachers and Teaching

Opening Statement

Teachers often work alone in isolation; planning lessons, preparing materials, grading papers, assessing students, designing units and curricula, assisting individual students with private needs, and much more, are examples of teaching responsibilities. Harsh but true, our students do not always see our hidden efforts outside of the class and base their liking of the teacher and the class on how the teacher performs and utilizes teaching techniques in the classroom. Nevertheless, the art of teaching should be a genuine will to promote learning both inside and outside of the classroom. In order to best fulfill the teacher’s responsibility we need to be flexible in our teaching and knowledgeable on how to assess our students appropriately. Furthermore, the willingness to integrate new principles and techniques while skillfully planning and adapting lesson plans with flexibility are what allow us to become better teachers. Ultimately, teachers would want to educate students to become “ones’ best resource” and continue learning after parting from us teachers.


Awareness: the impact of their teaching upon learners and their learning

Teachers have a great influence on students. During my undergraduate studies I took a course on Plant Biology where my professor’s passions and love for the subject sparked my interest in an unknown subject and motivated me to study the contents with joy. At the same time some of my friends had a different professor in a different section; while teaching to the same school standards using the same textbook and performing the same experiments in the labs, their professors was producing “talking bubbles like the comics” as described by Parker Palmer (2002). At the end of the semester, my class’s exam scores had a much higher average than the other class and I walked away with a B+ on a subject not directly related to my major.

While I was able to try out different teaching approaches and techniques during my internship teaching at Costa Rica, it was not until months after the experience that I was able to analyze my pedagogy and how it impacted on my students. The discourse analysis assignment (T&T Aw D1) for the English Applied Linguistics (EAL) course at SIT allowed me to first transcribe a recorded segment of my teaching from the internship then analyze the script line by line. For each line I analyzed how the role, speech act, turn taking, and patterns of the speaker affected the class and student learning. In part III, the pedagogical analysis portion of the document, I wrote that “I have the tendency to cut off my students’ speech before they could actually complete their sentences” and becoming aware of this bad habit made me embarrassed of my poor performance in the classroom. I started to understand “the frustration that some of my students could’ve felt when they were trying to express themselves in a foreign language.” Not only do I cut off my students, the recorded evidence in transcription shows that I sometime ended up hijacking the direction of student conversations and blocked the path to student learning. These behaviors were those that I would never be able to see while I was teaching in action. According to the practices and principles of the Silent Way approach, my behavior was a perfect contradiction to “Don’t do for the students what they can do for themselves” as well as what Shakti Gattegno said in her workshop that “Teachers must tap in to the students’ inner resources; to take responsibility to mobilize those resources”. (T&T Aw D2) Tying my discourse analysis with some approaches principles removed my blind spot where I unintentionally blocked off student-learning opportunities with my bad habits.

Although as stated in my pedagogical analysis of my discourse analysis assignment that “the amount of time required for such an activity may seem a little unrealistic,” the amount and depth of speech and utterances in English from illiterate students were few and easy enough for me to analyze them while teaching. Over the two semesters of teaching a literacy level class at the San Mateo Adult School I discovered that student learning had been extremely apparent, such as a student not able to form the letter “y” properly on lined paper to mastering it by the end of the class. A recent reflective journal (T&T Aw D3) describes how I was attuned to possible negative impacts my teaching would have on my students. The flooding of “next teacher!” shouted by my two fast learners signaled me that they took all the turns and were dominating the class. I took immediate intelligent actions to counter the situation by slowing myself down, reconstructed the activity, instructed my teaching aid to stop helping, and gave a longer time frame for students to challenge themselves. The collaborative and constructive learning that took place was rewarding to me, as I expressed that “Had I not the patience to do this step by step with my students, God knows how many more months will it take for them to figure out how to spell and write on their own.”


Attitudes: willingness to change their teaching

I never thought to myself after a class that it was the best I have done. There is always something to improve on, something to be modified, and something to learn from a lesson given. My strength to observe critically and the desire to reflect immediately after a lesson are what supported my growth as an educator. In order to culturally fit in new living environments, I had been a keen and observant since my childhood growing up in different countries. In the early days of my teaching career in Japan I became aware of the importance of being flexible in teaching thanks to my strength of observation in the classroom. The fourth paragraph of my teaching autobiography paper for the Approaches class at SIT described that I changed a pair-work activity into a group-work activity because I saw many confused faces among the students. This particular experience led me to believe that “it is critical for teachers to modify lesson plans immediately during lessons, because students only have one opportunity to learn from us.” (T&T At D1)

Theories are not of value until they are put into practice in the real world. It is embarrassing to admit that while I knew the importance of changing my teaching to best serve my students, I struggled to change when the scale was bigger than just one lesson plan; I had to change my curriculum! In fall of 2007, I was assigned to teach a low beginning / literacy class instead of just a low beginning class. Little did I imagine how different the needs of my literacy students would be in comparison to low beginning students. The only reference to a curriculum of the literacy was the one for the low beginning level, which I thought I could just adapt from. From my failures I learned that sometimes, in order to change, adaptation is not enough; it takes the courage to throw existing materials away completely and build new lessons from scratch. The following paragraph from my teaching reflection shows a newly formed layer of my flexibility to changes.
The most important thing to take into consideration while teaching is to teach according to the students’ needs, not what others think would be best for them. Especially with adults, they tend to know much better about what they want so the teacher’s attitude should be accommodating and flexible, but at the same time firm from the educator’s professional point of view. (T&T At D2)

When I started teaching the literacy class for the second semester, I did what I learned from the last semester and abandoned the idea to adapt old materials. Instead, I revisited my teaching approaches and modified them accordingly to my group of students. In a reflection I wrote on my approaches I tried out a recording activity derived from Curan’s Community Language learning (CLL) approach in my class and formed a non-hostile environment and at the same time provided an authentic activity to integrate student generated languages to make their learning more personalized. Furthermore, I created a virtual version of the Cuisenaire rods on the computer to work on simple grammar structures, and began to use more body gestures to withdraw languages silently out of my students. (T&T At D3) These new changes I decided to make were exciting and motivating for me as the instructor, and at the same time provide more relevancy to improve their learning processes. With the attitude to be flexible and wanting to embrace changes, it is only natural for the teacher to enjoy teaching and have fun with the students while they learn.


Knowledge of theories and methods of assessment, both formal and informal

The first few tests I created was during my teaching internship in Costa Rica, and they all followed the format of the sample tests included at the end of the textbook “New Interchange”. I found “The New Interchange” to be a good textbook, and the tests provided were logical and effective. T&T K1 D1 shows that I took apart the tests in the New Interchange and re-assembled the written portion according to the materials I had taught my students while meeting FUNDATEC’s institutional scoring standards. Oral assessment, however, was what I had to create on my own. T&T K1 D2 p1 was the last conversation test I gave to my level nine students which evaluated their performance with three different criteria: grammar, voice, and presentation. The contents of the test consisted of various situations that the students must incorporate to demonstrate proper usage of the language and culture presented to them throughout the course, you may view a short sample by watching the video clip T&T K1 M1. I also left a comment box to give specific compliments or suggestions for the students as shown the sample pictures on T&T K1 D2 p2.

At the end of my internship, I wrote in my self-assessment that I needed to “seek for other effective methods to assess my students’ performances and learning”. In my Curriculum Design and Assessment class, I read a useful article on alternative assessment by Kathleen Bailey that nicely contrasted traditional and alternative assessment such as performance tests and using portfolios for self-assessment. (Bailey, 1998) It was one of those ‘ah-hah’ moments when I found out that playing games with your students is a form of informal assessment, and informal assessment deals with many other creative activities such as group projects, journal exchange, story telling, brainstorming in groups, etc. Many of these activities I’ve done as a student myself, or have done with students. Another eye-opening article was the “Assessment FOR vs. Assessment OF learning” that pointed out distinct values that assessments FOR learning results in encouraging, building confidence and hope, and offering success to the students.

Not only had she provided us with valuable articles to increase our knowledge of assessments, the course instructor Beverly Burkett gave us an example of a traditional test, and organized many stations with different alternative assessment activities for us to analyze as shown in T&T K1 D3. The analytical questions provided in the worksheet on p2 were effective so that I understood how to properly use different types of assessment activities. By the end of the course, each student had to develop an assessment plan for the projected curriculum we anticipated to develop in the near future. The three main areas of the assessment plan were assessing for needs, learning progress, and course assessment. Pages 1-3 of T&T K1 D4 show my first attempt to match some existing assessment activities into the needs assessment area. Beverly suggested that I gather more information on my activities and decide again which activities of the wide range I had provided were necessary. Pages 4-8 is the finished product after revision where I included specific numbers and range of what students can expect for both the progress and course assessments. Although I didn’t have real students to try out the assessments, I received valuable feedback from the course instructor and peers about creating an assessment plan.

At the San Mateo Adult School, I have been trying to develop a learning progress exam for my literacy class. Unfortunately, the open enrollment system had made it extremely difficult to administrate the exam to equally assess a mix of both old and new students. It is my hope to establish a more dependable curriculum by shortening the length of the course hence less materials to cover on the exam itself.


Knowledge of reflective teaching and experiential learning

I have chosen this extra sub-competency because reflective teaching and experiential learning are skills that have made the most impact on my study and internship phases at SIT. In every course I took at SIT, there was an emphasis on how important experiential learning is yet it was never explicitly taught in detail throughout the year – perhaps that’s also part of the learning! I picked up the majority of my understanding of experiential learning when my internship supervisor Mary Scholl in Costa Rica worked with me individually and guided me through the different stages of the cycle. T&T K2 D1 includes an example of how a detailed description document of the lesson helps the reflection process and a brief transcript of our conversation showing how Mary guided me to analyze and plan actions. We first went through her description document then she asked me how I felt, if I could relate my experience to any theories, and if there were any connection to past classes. The “Analyze” stage was what I had trouble with, but with her guidance I successfully made connections between theories and past experiences while taking emotions out of the equation. I never imagined that with the right tools (lenses and questions) I would be able to discover and learn so much about my students, my class, and my teaching! Lastly, Mary asked me to come up with some plans for improvement using the SMARTA (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely based, and Adaptable) planning technique. This “Plan Action” stage was the most valuable to me because it highly motivates me with concrete visions to improve my teaching.

Shortly after my return to SIT from the internship site, I was able to practice my newly acquired knowledge on reflective learning in hope to internalize it into a valuable skill. T&T K2 D2 shows that I had successfully imitated Mary’s technique on documenting a fellow classmate Tracy’s sample lesson for our Becoming Teacher Educator course and guided her to analyze and plan actions. Included in the same document is an e-mail from Tracy stating her learning experience and complimenting my success in acquiring an effective way to reflect.

I learned the essence of experiential learning and was inspired by Mary so much that I wanted to know more about reflective teaching and experiential learning. After the end of the on-campus phase of my SIT studies, there were several additional courses offered to those who wanted to become teacher trainers. One of them was Jack Millett’s class on reflective teaching. Although the core belief of the course was the same as what Mary had already guided me to learn about, Jack presented the concept of being present and how by staying present we can reflect in action on top of reflect on action. In my written response to the class, I demonstrated my understanding that “it could be difficult to reflect in the right direction” when a teacher is not both physically and mentally present in the classroom. (T&T K1 D3) Staying present, especially mentally, requires one to be open and responsive to the situation and adapt with flexibility and creativity then express the changes with integrity and sincerity to the students. One key element to successfully reflect in action is to observe any emotional changes within oneself at the same time. Our emotion can greatly affect our ability to reflect as it could serve to be both an inhibitor and a catalyst to reflect according to Stanley in her article “Learning to think, feel, and teach reflectively”. (Stanley, 1999) By being present we can identify our emotions and use them as a catalyst to reflect in action. Even if that reflection could be extremely short, I can only imagine that it is logical to follow the framework of the experiential learning cycle. The first two stages, to experience and describe, occur as I teach and can be bypassed. Then I am able start the cycle with the analysis and take immediate action to ensure the quality of the learners’ learning experience. This modified cycle allowed me to reach my students at the San Mateo Adult School better because there are always new students joining the class and old students dropping out on a daily basis due to the open enrollment system. To reflect after a class is often too late for my students, as I do not always get to see them again to carry out my planned actions.


Skills: teaching reflectively by seeing, describing, inquiring into, and making hypotheses about students’ learning and the teaching context, and taking intelligent action based on this process

This extra sub-competency complements the previous section and features the collected reflections I have written after the on-campus phase at SIT.

My reflections were in the bullet-point format before I learned about the ELC framework from Mary during my internship. One of my lesson plans and daily reflections, T&T S D1, should give anyone a clear idea how one dimensional, simple, and systematic my reflections were. It was through hours of practice with Mary herself before I could start producing a more robust reflection. My internship assignment to reflect on key learning moments for the students, is an example of how I progressed the skill to describe a moment with vivid details without opinions and judgments. However, Mary’s comment “James this analysis leaves me hungry for more as far as interpretation is concerned” clearly showed that my analysis was not robust and multi-faceted enough. (T&T S D2) Perhaps expressing my thoughts is a hurdle that I always had difficulty with since my high school days when I had trouble proving step by step on how I solved an algebra equation for my algebra class! Just like how I would always get the answers correctly for math questions, my plan actions for my reflections were “concrete and focused” as Mary pointed out in her comments.

Addicted to reflecting using the ELC framework, I took every opportunity I had to practice this skill once I started teaching at the San Mateo Adult School. Each night after my evening class I would take a slice from the class and reflect on it. Although most of them were short reflections, practicing the skill day after day had made the ability to reflect almost like a second nature to my teaching. After a month I looked back on my compilation of reflections and said,
Wow, I have reflected after each class for a month and it only got easier day after day! I think I can see a pattern now how some reflections are more useful than others, and which ones are of more value to me. For example, on the 11th there wasn’t much to reflect on. On the other hand, the 12th, 18th, and 24th were valuable and I should focus on them more. I should try to reflect once a week instead and pick out one to focus on more. (T&T S D3)

I started to be able to distinguish the moments where the students were learning or struggling with learning and decided to narrow it down to one reflection per week. Following my planned actions, my class stabilized and starting out a new semester was not as intimidating the second time on. At the same time, I started to reflect in action more than to reflect on action, and when I feel the need to write reflections they are those of good quality.

Recently I created a web log (blog) to store my reflections on the Internet at http://jazwu.blogspot.com where my colleagues and MAT classmates are able to respond and comment on. There have not been many replies yet, but as I have copied to T&T S1 D4, another MAT 37 student Ruby Eichenour shared some of her teaching techniques as she resonated with my reflection journal on the hybrid human computer I tried out in my class. It is my hope that with the convenience of the Internet, my reflections will continue to improve in depth and quality as they are being read, reviewed, and commented by teachers around the globe.


Skill: creating and implementing effective and appropriate lesson plans and units

In the art of teaching, one must be skillful in creating and crafting lesson plans and units while keeping everything relevant and appropriate for the students. My only knowledge of lesson plan creation was from the intensive TESOL certificate training course I attended in San Francisco. There, they emphasized the importance of the “activation” stage, after the “engage” and “study” stages, where students practice the target language in learner-centered activities. The acronym ESA was drilled into my head and has its own column in the lesson plan template, which you can see on the second column on page 2 of T&T S2 K1.

In the Language Analysis and Lesson Planning (LALP) course at SIT, the course instructor Susan Barduhn introduced three key lesson-planning principles: The first is to always have an objective for the lesson, the second is to check for both the E-factors and A-factor (Thornsbury, 1999), and third is to anticipate problems and plan solutions in advance. The E-factors that consist of economy, ease, and efficacy, along with the A-factor that stands for appropriacy, are the four criteria a teacher should consider while planning a lesson. Throughout the course I had three opportunities to try out three different lesson plan templates and practice the art of balancing different factors and anticipate problems. Page 1 of T&T S2 D1 was the template that Susan provided and used for all three lessons. Pages 2, 6, and 7 are the different templates I tried, and page 5 is a sample of peer evaluation based on the E and A factors. On my last lesson planning reflection (p8, #5), I wrote that of the three templates I tried I was most comfortable with the first template (p2), from my TESOL certificate course at San Francisco. Susan’s feedback on my reflection said that my template “helps clarify my thinking but does not help me remember what comes next”, which suggested that my lesson plans lack structure and details. Fortunately, my peers’ evaluation such as the one seen on page 2 proves that the outcome of my plan was appropriate for the targeted students.

Eager to improve detail and structure of my lesson plans, I spent much time during my internship in reflection on the style and format that is most comfortable for me to use when planning a lesson and at the same time would be more structured and detailed than the ones I did for the LALP course. Page 2 of T&T S2 D2 shows that initially I developed a hybrid version of the three templates I used in the LALP course, where the core was still of the first template but with more room for the activities to include steps and details. While this format was effective and appropriate, it was not economical and I ended up altering a good part of the lesson anyway. Upon reviewing a handout on the fifteen (T&T S2 D2, p1) suppositions of lesson planning I tried and focused on the fourth and fifth point when planning. I would imagine how I would stand in front of the students and present grammar, give instructions, conduct group work, etc. I also gave myself more flexibility with time, and kept reminding myself that the written plan is not absolute to follow. Lastly, I developed the habit of using a red pen to modify my lesson and note changes during and after class, followed with a bullet-point style reflection as you can see on page 3 of T&T S2 D2. I found this process valuable because the modified parts in red helped me plan the next lesson more accurately and effectively while the reflective notes reminded me to prepare materials and activities that are more appropriate for my students to practice the target language.

I may have gotten better at planning individual lessons during my internship, but I was not able to develop much of a skill to planning a unit altogether. In the Curriculum and Assessment course at SIT, I had my first opportunity to practice planning a unit for a group of imaginary students. T&T S2 D3 includes an overview and the objectives of the unit, along with the languages to be focused on and the four cultural-oriented lesson plans that focus on the four skills. There were three hurdles that I had to overcome in order to design this unit. The first obstacle was the inflexibility of textbooks; I struggled with cultural and age appropriateness of the contents with only one textbook. The second obstacle, on the contrary, was that with hundreds of complementary materials available and easily accessible, it was challenging to select the right activity in a limited amount of time. The last, and also the one I was most worried about and did not exactly crossed the hurdle, was the possibility that depending on student response I may need to discard if not just parts, but all of the lessons planned out for the unit. With my best effort, I went back to revise the first lesson plan template from my TESOL certificate course and broke down the plan to as many sections as possible so any section could be changed or altered easily. I also included detailed procedures for activities, such as the steps for the “rod recording activity” shown on page 9 of T&T S2 D3. It is clear from this unit planning assignment that I am more skillful in creating individual lesson plans than units. It is my hope that I can improve my overall vision of a course and design appropriate units by practicing with real students and reflecting on the results.


Conclusion

I have taken many steps forward on my teaching path, but there are three areas that I want to explore more closely. The first area is to review the assessment articles from the Curriculum and Assessment course and develop a robust and comprehensive, yet not too difficult assessment FOR my students at the San Mateo Adult School despite the challenge of open enrollment system and high student drop out rate. The second area is to try and get to work early so I can give myself at least five minutes before class to just relax and calm my emotions. This will allow me to become more present and should allow me to better reflect IN action using the experiential learning cycle framework. Lastly, I will try to include a section in my future lesson plans to anticipate problems as I had practiced in the LALP course until the process becomes more intuitive and requires less work. I hope these three steps will help me better prepare my students to discover their potentials and become more autonomous in learning.