Teaching Experience: What I Learned

Final Reflective Essay on T from each oneing and Learning I sop up learned three things from my student teaching scram effective pedagogy, folkroom management, and humility. In this expository essay I will briefly explain each of the above-mentioned and explain why it is most-valuable. Among unk in a flashn language instructors, there is debate about how to most effectively teach. The debate can be simplified to 2 pedagogical advancementes grammarbased vs. immersion-based. The grammar approach to learning a foreign language is traditional and still the dominate pedagogy in use today.If you took French, German, or Spanish in high school, this is how you were taught. The grammar approach is a mechanical approach to language-learning and has advantages and disadvantages. For example, if I am teaching a student the verb to go, I would make unnecessary the various forms on the mesa I go, you go, he/she goes, etc.. I would then direct students to practice this verb through writt en or spoken activities. When I think that I have adequately taught the verb, I would likely give a formative assessment to check student comprehension.And so it goes, piece by piece, I put together a language for my students. The advantage of this approach is that it is simple and very comprehensible. Its like putting together a puzzle, one piece at a time. Students do non experience tremendous anxiety and do not feel lost in a sea of incomprehensible words. The principle disadvantage of this approach is that it is slow to build fluency. For those of you who took a foreign language in high school or even college, how much do you really remember instanter? The solution to the problem of fluency is immersion.One form of controlled immersion is called TPRS, and is the focus of the next few paragraphs. Language teachers and learners know that the key component to learning a foreign language is to travel abroad and live in that country. Teachers began experimenting with ways to duplic ate this powerful learning experience in the classroom, and I feel that TPRS is the most sure-fire imitation of it to date. TPRS stands for Total Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. This pedagogical technique recognizes that a class meeting five days per week for less than an min cannot imitate a true immersion xperience because true immersion involves a 24/7 experience. Instead, TPRS imitates the most salient and valuable features of immersion. Like the grammar approach, it has advantages and disadvantages. In TPRS, the teacher selects the most critical, high-frequency words and tells a repetitive story with them. For example, if I were teaching my students the same verb to go, I would invent or borrow a simple, silly story. past I would repeat to go over fifty times in that story. Prior to beginning the story I would briefly explain to go and write it on the board.Students are repeatedly exposed to important, high-frequency words in context, similar to what happens i n the true immersion experience. Like the true immersion experience, TPRS builds fluency well. This better fluency is possible because the pedagogy imitates a part of the true immersion. The disadvantage to TPRS is that the grammar is delayed. A first-year TPRS student might say something weird like, I consume peaches, because he hasnt yet learned that it should be said, I eat peaches. I conclude that TPRS is the most effective pedagogy.Compared to the traditional grammar approach, it builds fluency faster. The TPRS students I deal to report that they feel like theyre learning more and more engaged when compared to their previous grammar experiences. I believe that building fluency is the most important thing I can offer language-learners, and therefore my introduction to TPRS was the most important pedagogical event in my world. Because pragmatism is central to my teaching philosophy, I will most certainly use this technique.Classroom management is one of the most important skil ls a teacher can have because it really refers to whether or not the teacher has the class on-task and learning. If the class is not on-task, then learning is not taking localise I will briefly tell the story of my experience with eighth-grade students re classroom management and then explain why this knowledge is very important. When I took the reins of my new classroom at C R Anderson shopping centre School, I purposefully did not change my cooperating teachers procedures and routines.I thought that changing to my teaching style immediately would be too abrupt and quite gradually transitioned to my different style. Things went smoothly for several weeks students were on-task and learning. Then I completed the transition from the students familiar routines and procedures to mine. A week or dickens after all old routines and procedures were gone, I began to lose control of my students. I was flabbergasted by some of the behavioral problems that appeared, often in students that h ad never been tortuous before.I could see that I was losing them, so I tightened up discipline and started giving out detentions. Although my tighter discipline quieted the class down, it was not an effective solution because 1)I was spending class time giving out detentions and 2) they really werent on task, they were just more quiet. I read an excerpt from a Master Teachers book on classroom management (Mr. Wong) and it changed my life. I realized that the reason my students were no longer on task is because I had failed to provide them with routines and procedures. For example, I did not implement a seating chart.This was a procedure that the students were used to and its absence created a awareness of anxiety that translated into classroom management problems. I re-implemented the procedures and routines that had been in place with my cooperating teacher and immediately got my students (for the most part) back ontask. I cannot stress how important routines and procedures are f or keeping students on-track and learning. Without solid classroom management, I may just as well be running a study hall. Because a teachers purpose is to be teaching, my acquisition of this critical skill changed my life.I owe a thanks to my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Barb Cooper, Mr. Wong, and SOE instructors for providing me with excellent classroom management materials. Lastly, I have learned humility. I am in general a confident psyche and take pride in being competent in my subject. Student teaching taught me that I did not know everything. I would hate to be in a profession or job where I felt like I was done learning or where I felt bored. I now know with certainty that I love teaching, and knowing that about a career before looking for a job is important.I am not the inviolate best classroom manager, nor am I the absolute best at TPRS. I do, however, have very good tools and experience to guide my mastery of these subjects, and I am extremely optimistic and eager to conti nue teaching as a professional. I am grateful to my cooperating teachers, their schools, and the SOE for the professional support and guidance they provided. The sense of humility I now possess is what allows me to continue to grow professionally, and continued growth, above all other qualities, is important to me.