My Teaching Philosophy
What is learning?
I believe learning occurs when students actively get involved in learning context and the task is not overwhelming. These points can be the teacher’s main responsibility either; making students participate in the classroom activities and preparing suitable teaching materials. Cognitive psychology says that the learner plays a critical role in determining what he or she gets out of instruction. Learners are not simply passive recipients of information; they actively construct their own understanding. I believe in this assertion. Students should get opportunities to ask what they are curious or confused. By providing appropriate answers, a teacher can scaffold the students’ learning. Appropriate answers implies a lot here. First, it connotes students’ cognitive level to deal with learning tasks. If the task is too difficult, students can’t learn even with teacher’s assistant. Second, it doesn’t mean teacher provides direct answers for the problem. Teacher provides time for student to ask questions, explore options, and suggest to students different ways. Through these activities, students perceive their own learning process, at last they reach to the learning experience. Finally, appropriate answer should come from students’ needs analysis. Like cognitive level, teachers should consider students’ learning styles and interests to facilitate their learning.
What is teaching?
Good teaching is equivalent to whatever helps students learn.
I believe teaching is facilitating students’ learning. According to Grasha (1996), a teacher, as a facilitator, guides and directs students by asking questions, suggesting alternatives, exploring options, and encouraging students to develop criteria to make informed choices. Overall goal for facilitating teacher is to provide as much support and encouragement as possible for students to be independent in their learning context. In order to do that, lesson plans should be designed to meet students’ needs and goals. Implementing all student’s needs into one lesson plan could be impossible, however, I could apply diverse teaching strategies such as group works or pair works to make students help each other to develop their own ability of critical thinking.
Goals for students
English has united the whole world into a lingua franca. Growing generations should be able to express themselves understood in English. Whether they do business, research, writing, or even traveling they will need to communicate with international people. English becomes an important means of communicating. Overall goal of my students on English is understanding different cultures and communicating with people from other countries. My students will go out abroad more and more in the future. I am in charge of preparing my students to communicate with other people in English. As an English teacher, I am obliged to contribute large part for my students to achieve these goals.
Implementation of the philosophy
Students learn through interactions between themselves and learning materials, between classmates, or between students and teachers. Teacher’s job will be facilitating classroom interactions among students and between students and teacher. In my language class, I’ll design small group work and pair work to activate classroom interactions. This type of learning approach is called cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 2000). Weak students working individually are likely to give up when they get stuck; working cooperatively, they could keep going. Strong students faced with the task of explaining and clarifying material to weaker students often find gaps in their own understanding and fill them in. Students working alone may tend to delay completing assignments or skip them altogether, but when they know that others are counting on them, they are motivated to do the work in a timely manner. In a language class, students should feel comfortable speaking out their opinions and they get help from peers when the teacher is not available.
Personal growth plan
I have been teaching at two public middle schools since 2004. Becoming an expert English teacher is my long standing wish. An expert English teacher has high language proficiency on speaking, writing, reading, listening and also classroom management skills. I know well it can not be accomplished during one night. Every day in my teaching, I will study my students, facilitate their learning process by modeling, providing authentic materials, and cooperative learning environments. Accumulated experience in teaching will succeed my goal.
Reference
Grasha, A. F. (1996). Teaching with style. Pittsburgh, PA: Alliance.
Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Stanne, M. B. (2000). Cooperative learning methods: A meta-analysis.
Krashen, S. D. (1985). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. Readings on the development of children, 23(3), 34-41.