Nelson Mandela once said: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Being a part of 21st century has had an enormous impact on the education field. Accordingly, student’s interest and learning styles have changed. Teachers are doing their best to keep up with the changes by adapting new strategies inside the classroom. Being a teacher requires you to test new strategies, adapt new methods, and keep updating teaching styles and methods. Inside the classroom, my job is to be the motivator, teacher, creator, guide, and facilitator. To achieve that, one has to fully understand student’s learning styles, their needs, and their ideal way of learning.
I will strive to be a mentor to my student’s, guide and listen to them in a friendly manner, and encourage them to ask questions in order for me to understand the way they want to learn. It is important to get an understanding of what they enjoy doing and their interests and with this knowledge encourage students to get involved, participate and learn . Having said that, this is the reason why I have joined the BLCSI program to widen my knowledge, improve my teaching skills, and to fulfil my curiosity about how different educational institutes achieve success, to be at the top in the learning scale. When I started this program, I was not sure what to expect but my eagerness to experience new and effective methods of teaching a language has encouraged me to join this program.
I have been an English teacher for 11 years. My role is to give knowledge and facilitate it in my own method of teaching while students are listening and processing it. I enjoy presenting information in a new, creative, and interesting way to assure that it will last longer in student’s minds. I achieve this during lessons by repetition, explaining while students are listening, ensuring there is memorizing and understanding. Students are evaluated twice during each semester to measure their progress. Obviously, my teaching philosophy is Essentialism as I believe this to be the best as it has demonstrated its effectiveness worldwide, an old philosophy illustrated inside the classroom.
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The areas I am looking to gain knowledge in are lesson plans, motivation of students and classroom management. First , a good lesson plan would ensure that the learning process will go smoothly and all the objectives are achieved. Throughout the period time, the emphasis should be on listening and speaking skills because once the students develop these skills, the other skills such as reading and writing are much easier to be learned. Moreover, the well-organized lesson plan enhances teaching using some teaching aids that facilitate the learning process
Second, keeping the students motivated is a hard task but it is not impossible to be achieved. Every student is unique and has the ability to learn if s/he is interested enough. To engage them is done by simply relating the lesson to something they like or to an interesting topic or by using different and new appropriate tools that serve the lesson and integrate them at the same time. Nowadays, there are a lot of teaching aids that are online or visual aids that encourage cooperative learning, and active learning. Through observation, I will learn about some of these methods.
Third, student’s progress enhance by using some new techniques by implement retrieval practice such as bell work and exit ticket. These two strategies provide an instant feedback for the teacher to measure the learners’ understanding of both the previous lesson and the current lesson, prepares them for the new lesson, organizes their information, and more importantly allows their knowledge to be retained. Bell work is simply “small slips of paper at the very beginning of class as students are entering the classroom (“bell work”) or before students leave the classroom (“exit tickets”) that include questions about content learned in class.” (Agarwal, Roediger, McDaniel, & McDermott, 3013). Also, the primary goal is to benefit from of every minute of the period time and as feedback for the teacher, which shows how affective her/his lesson was presented.
My next goal is to manage the classroom and create the best educational environment for the students. Inside the classroom, the students should feel free to participate, show respect and be confident in their answers. Most of the students have a fear of answering wrong due to different background reasons. I would like to create an educational environment where the students are not afraid of making mistakes as they should realize that the essential reason to attend school is to learn and there nothing wrong in making mistakes. Moreover, they should learn from their own mistakes.
Another goal is to increase the student’s behaviour inside the school by adapting a program called Hero. Being an observer in University High School, I saw the Hero program in use and the results of student’s good behaviour. Students, parents, and teachers can access the student’s behaviour record by downloading the app on their devices. The students strive to earn points by doing the certain tasks and also it tracks and notifies students and their parents if the students are late for classes.
Some action steps should be considered to fulfil the required goals. The first step was reading and learning more about the new strategies that are used inside the classroom and their proven benefits. From the observer point of view, I have the chance to recognize the used strategies and how affective they are. In addition, I am lucky to experience the learning in another environment which is not my classroom and observe the role of the educator and the learners.
Another action plan is to attend an educational conference where I can learn the new up to date ways of learning. For example, when I attended the R3 conference, the presentation about sensory learning was so fascinating. I have started to learn more about sensory teaching and how hands on learning helps students to grasp the knowledge and moreover, they won’t forget it as it involves some of their senses in the learning process.
My future action plan will include four different components. First, I intend to change my education philosophy a little bit. As I mentioned earlier, that my role inside the classroom was more Essentialism but my philosophy is going to be a mix of Essentialism and Progressivism. This change is in reference to students and desirable outcomes. I will be a guide rather than a teacher -source of information- in the classroom, so I give my students the chance to research for the required information, learn how to obtain and explore what they need. Occasionally, in my classroom I illustrate a mini version of progressivism inside the classroom by making working groups and assign the students to move inside the classroom trying to find answers for certain questions related to the subject. However, I still have some responsibilities to ensure that all of the students are participating and are being involved in the learning process.
Another action plan to be considered is to give the students the decision to choose what they want to learn and their preferred way of learning. For example in the unit that discussed the technology , I would ask the students to choose what sort of technology they like most , how they would feel to live without it, how can they use it to improve themselves, and are they going to allow their future kids to use it etc.
One important thing is to encourage the students’ critical thinking. In University High School, the teachers follow a strategy called close reading which implies using the students’ higher level thinking skills. This strategy gives the students the chance to examine the same material three times, each time from different aspect to instil critical thinking and problem solving. Teachers guide the students to ask the right questions, analyse the different topics, and to find suitable solutions.
Before starting the program, there was a condition which is included in the action plan, that is to transfer all what has been experienced in the program to other colleagues in Saudi Arabia. This is going to be by presenting some model lessons that illustrate the new methods of teaching and strategies. The attendees will be other teachers teaching the same subject that I teach.
Although all action plans have the anticipated results, I’m absolutely sure that most of my action plans will have a greater influence on my students. Upon completion, this experience goes beyond classroom experience and it has forever enhanced the quality of my teaching.
