Teaching for me is a way of life. I find teaching enjoyable and rewarding. Spanish, the discipline that I teach is my passion. I love to share my knowledge of the Spanish language and culture with others. I am a very passionate and enthusiastic instructor. I share my passion and enthusiasm for the Spanish language with my students.
My role as a teacher is to be a facilitator of learning. I accomplish this, by providing students with comprehensible language input and output, presenting content to be covered in an engaging way, and making learning relevant to their own personal lives.
Blended learning is the instructional framework that I implement within my classroom environment. I believe that learning environments that are positive, personalized, flexible, and student centered increase student engagement and learning. I am aware that all students do not learn at the same pace, nor do they have the same learning styles. The blended learning environment provides me the opportunity to differentiate or personalize instruction to meet the needs of all students. In order to personalize learning I utilize student choice boards, learning menus, along with providing resources, such as review videos of class lesson notes, or a YouTube playlist of content covered or content to be covered. I also utilize web-based applications such as Pear Deck, Wizer, Quizizz, and G Suite to enhance learners' course experience, promote student engagement, and support student learning. I am very intentional about creating activities, lesson tasks, utilizing web-based applications, and instructional approaches within my instruction, to ensure student engagement and support student learning. I consistently reflect on the effectiveness of lesson activities that I create and the web-based applications that use. Reflection and feedback help me determine what works and what doesn’t. The feedback I receive from student surveys and student self-assessments help me to adjust previous lessons or activities and to create future lessons and activities.
As an education professional, I believe my profession demands that I be flexible to the needs of the changing student and teacher. As teachers begin to shift from teacher-led instruction to student-centered learning, school districts, schools, teachers, and communities will need leaders to help contribute to encourage, support, teach, and train others in implementing blended learning environments in their classrooms. As an expert and leader of blended learning, take the responsibility to create and share resources such as video tutorials and lesson activities using various web-based applications as a way to support colleagues.