Teaching philosophy

"So often you find that the students you are trying to inspire are the ones who end up inspiring

you".

Sean Junkins

I am one of the teachers who contemplate that learners are our best teachers because learning is to discover new things that probably we already knew and students inspire me to discover more. They end inspiring ideas, and innovative purposes to work around their needs and improve my teaching and their learning process. The experiences that I live with them are the ones that end moving me to be better teacher and person, to love my labor, to feel the passion for teaching. 

That is why I teach, every day I have something to learn from learners, every day I have some words and advises to offer for someone who needs to be listened. Probably that is why God sent me to this mission and gave me the power to scaffold my students to learn new ways of offering a grain of sand to our society.

My teaching beliefs lay better in the Constructivism learning theory exposed by Bruner (1966) as cited by Patsula, P. (1999), where he affirmed that learning is a process in which learners construct new knowledge based on ideas upon their current knowledge.

However, I am not married with one theory in special, I consider that every teacher takes a little part that makes them feel identified from each theory. Hence, I adapt my methodology using the best parts of some learning theories such as Meaningful Learning exposed by Ausubel (1968), I really like diagrams to organize knowledge, to apply with my students and encourage them to learn by discovering what they already know.

I also believe that learning together is a way of building interpersonal skills to enrich our society with nice citizens who are always willing to help others. That is why I love that feeling of satisfaction when students show good faces at the end of a class, that means, a good teaching day were students got the clues of the session waiting to hear more about it because they were pretty engaged.

I love learning by playing because it motivates learners to think rapidly and enjoy while learning. One of the best facts of playing is to foster collaborative learning when students feel that they can help others, by increasing their knowledge of where help is needed, and by educating on how they can help. I consider that I can evaluate better when I apply a game with a specific topic than when I apply a test. Sometimes when I left homework I try to check it with a game, there I can see who did the homework and who tried to study the topic. I also like to listen students and respect their ideas and comments as I consider that what they think is really important to know what their perception is and that is part to be a member of society in order to assess their progress and my teaching practice too. In class I do not like to fight with them while they are noisy, I just have some rules for them to know that it is time to be quite, of course I left them a time to share ideas with others but they know that there is a limit when they need to pay attention and get concentrated again, this is done in order to foster autonomy and self-regulation.

Although my students face different familiar situations such as neglectful parents, living with relatives or grandparents, parents in jail, some come from family welfare institutions, forced displacement of their hometowns, domestic and psychological violence and different special conditions such as; deafness, amblyopia, mild mental retardation, different cases of autism, learning disabilities and some diseases difficult to face, I am very optimistic and I believe they are able to accomplish everything they want and obviously my aims for them. So, through my teaching practices, I expect to:

•Increase students' English knowledge based on their needs. 

•Scaffold learners to develop the ability to work productively with others.

•Improve students' ability to organize and use time effectively.

•Elicit student's communicative skills by working on different strategies and offering feedback.

•Improve my self-reflection and lifelong learning strategies to offer different ways to learn.

•Encourage learners to produce the L2 in a natural way making use of their daily experiences.

•Engage students by inspiring them with motivating information taking advantage of their learning style.

•Leave doubts in every session for students to look for more information and learn by themselves.

To conclude, I consider that I have a big responsibility in moral example as well as knowledge provision. As a facilitator, guide and input provider I try to introduce knowledge and new concepts in terms that the students will find simple and enjoyable as well as offer them a confident environment to elicit their interaction and decision making. I believe that every information that we announce to students is information that lives in our daily life, hence, a class without questions or comments is lost, what I expect in every class is to leave at least one doubt for students to ask or look for the answers after classes in order to address them to enrich their lifelong learning process.

References

• Ausubel, David P. (1968) Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View. New York and Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

• Patsula, P. (1999). Applying Learning Theories to Online Instructional Design. Retrieved November 13, 2015, from https://www.patsula.com/usefo/webbasedlearning/tutorial1/learning_theories_full_version.html#bruner

• Kearsley, G. (1994). Constructivist theory. Retrieved November 13, 2015, from  https://www.gwu.edu/~tip/bruner.html