Teaching

Through the LTS program, I have been able to more completely develop my teaching philosophy. My teaching philosophy, as discussed in the artifact, consists of accessibility, promoting intrinsic motivation, promoting communicative competence, and cultivating an active learning environment. In the creation of this artifact, I initially found myself listing many beliefs I had about teaching. I then considered the most prevalent ones at the core of my teaching philosophy.

The artifact I chose for my first reflection report is my reflection from the AEI internship I completed in Fall of 2022. In this artifact, I touch on giving and modeling directions as a main theme from what I learned in this internship. I learned that clear instruction (Yerian, 2022)--telling students where to look before talking, using gestures, modeling activities, and giving examples--contributes to making a classroom more accessible to different levels of learners and neurotypes. In building a positive classroom community, I learned that it is important to understand the students’ interests and recognize and acknowledge their struggles. In order to build connection and trust. An experience that exemplifies this was when I was relating to some of the students on how I do not like to listen or watch recordings of myself after they expressed concern for having to watch their video projects in class. After the term, one of those students expressed to me that they appreciated how kind and understanding I was to her and her friends. This was a very special and impactful moment for me that I will remember for the rest of my career. On the topics of autonomy (active learning) (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019), adaptability, and needs analysis (Nation & Macalister, 2010), I had experience with this when assigned to a student (that I’m calling J) who was level 0-1 with special permission to attend classes at the AEI. Since I did not have much information on what this student could do, I often had to modify activities or completely come up with other activities or strategies for her to participate in class (adaptability). Since her level was so low and because I did not speak her primary language at all, giving instructions or asking her questions in English was a little too difficult for her to understand, so we had to work together to communicate and finish tasks together (active learning). This gave me an opportunity to be more flexible and more comfortable with not having a strict plan and allowed me to problem solve on the spot. My trial and error approach to a needs analysis worked well. I would attempt to do an activity and if it was too difficult, I would simplify it. I would also go back to activities she had not done in a while to gauge what she could do on recall. This experience mirrored a very similar experience I had in high school while volunteering in an ESL class where I had no formal experience with language teaching. In reflecting on these experiences, it is evident how much I have grown since then.

One of the main parts of this reflection was focusing on clear instruction. I had a peer film a small portion of my giving instruction and then I transcribed it including filler words. Since this was the second reflection, I was able to use what I learned from the first transcription to be more conscious about how I give instructions the second time (for example, cutting down my use of filler words). An important realization for me was that my calm energy is okay, but some students may need higher energy activities to compensate. As important as it is to me to not force students into high energy or performative activities, it is also important for me to allow for higher energy students to thrive in a classroom I’m managing by giving them those options. This promotes an accessible, inclusive, and positive classroom community, which connects to my belief in autonomy, active learning, and a student centered approach.