Monitoring Your Own Teaching

Teaching involves an on-going process in which the educator is constantly reflecting on their teaching in order to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the students. This process is achieved through analyzing the student’s progress in their competence of the content material. Therefore, in teaching one must think critically about what the students accomplish in their learning. By doing so, the educator is better able to differentiate instruction to assure that each student achieves the correct understanding of the material. For this reason, I see the teacher as the learner and the learner as the teacher. In being reflective, the teacher is able to learn from the students what is effective in their teaching and what is not. If the teacher realizes that something is not working and the students are not understanding, the teacher should then consequently make changes to make certain that the learners to acquire the material.

It is so necessary that we are constantly observing ourselves and our students, or have another colleague observe our classroom for a different perspective. When I begin teaching I would love t have this happen as much as possible, because I feel like my first year will be so overwhelming with getting the hang of everything, that my time to reflect will be intruded upon since I will be focusing on other tasks. As the years go on, I am sure that my observing will be much more accurate since I will already be used to the schedule of the day, however, I still believe that it is necessary to bring in multiple perspectives to the classroom.

There is a program that is called Response to Intervention (RTI) and it is a great program in which the teacher is constantly monitoring each students progress through data collection. They collect data about how well the student is doing on tests, how many words the student is reading a minute, how well they are comprehending what they read, etc, etc. In RTI, the teacher is constantly differentiating instruction to meet the needs of the student. I feel that RTI would be ideal for the ESL classroom, especially since there is often not a large number of students in each classroom, and I believe that it is an effective way to monitor the students progress, but as well as the effectiveness of my teaching approaches and methods.

Assessment

When I hear the word assessment, I automatically think of an exam that is multiple choice, or an exam in which I have to respond to short answers or write definitions. I found these chapters to be extremely resourceful, because there are more ways than one to assess and evaluate your learners. Assessment can and should occur in the classroom daily, in that the students are producing output of what they have learned, and in that the teacher is evaluating their output either through observation or through reviewing the students' work. It is imperative that the teacher is constantly assessing the learners knowledge, to ensure that each learner is gaining an accurate understanding of the material. More importantly, the teacher needs to be a 'reflective practitioner' in which they are constantly responding to the the students success or failure of each assessment. Assessing the students can occur through a simple conversation that the each student has with their partner where they review the vocabulary (for example) that they have just learned. Assessment does not have to be in written form, in fact, a teacher can assess their students through observations or in an oral manner in which the teacher is reflecting on the students responses. This summer during my internship, I learned a lot about RTI (Response to Intervention), and part of this 'program' is that the teacher is constantly collecting data and monitoring each student's success or failure, and then differentiating their instruction for those students to ensure that each learner effectively learns the material. Assessment is key in education, because it allows the teacher to gain knowledge about how each student is doing in the class and in learning the material.

I really like the questions that the chapter presents about how to make sure that the assessment the teacher is implementing is valid, reliable and objective.
     -Does the test measure what it is supposed to measure?
     -Is the test consistent in its measurement?
    -Is the test unbiased?
These questions are all so important, and each teacher needs to make sure that they are answering YES to each question when they implement their assessment.

I really like the idea of nontraditional forms of assessment for my ESL learners, specifically because it allows for creativity and use of the language. However, I believe that in my teaching it is important to introduce them to the dreaded multiple-choice and D) none of the above assessments because they indeed will be faced with such tests. I feel that I can prepare them and develop skills in them that can help them overcome these tests that they are so unfamiliar with. One of my main goals as an ESL teacher is to educate and prepare my students to succeed in the regular classroom, and unfortunately these multiple tests are part of such environment. Does this mean that my assessments will always be multiple choice? NO, not at all, as I've said before there are a million other ways to assess my students learning. However, I wish to expose them to such formats of testing to ensure that they are prepared when the time comes to take one.

I really enjoyed reading about the different ways to assess the students writing in chapter 34. I believe that student writing should develop as a partnership with the teacher, rather than the student just writing for the teacher's eyes to read. I also believe in positive reinforcement in that I would never mark all over a students paper with errors, I would much rather prefer to point out the things they did right and then ask them questions about how they think they can improve their writing. By doing this, the student is active in the process of writing, and can much develop their writing skills with a sense of ownership over their work, rather than just the teacher telling them what to fix and what is wrong.

Raising cultural awareness

I really like this chapter and article about Culture by Kuma because I truly believe that teaching language and culture go hand in hand. As I have said before, in teaching language, it is appropriate to teach the proper use of the language in a communicative setting, and this has to do with how others in a given language community use the language itself. This has to do with topics such as illocutionary forces, in which there is a socially acceptable way to carry out a compliment for example. Such illocutionary forces, such as compliments, requests, etc, vary from culture to culture, therefore it is necessary that we teach such things to our ESOLers. This is problematic, however, because culture in the United States is not as defined as it is in other cultures for example. Before I studied abroad, I felt that there really was not an American culture, and when I told people I was from the United States, they asked me if ate hamburgers and pizza everyday and watched football. This is obviously not true, and I do not do those things everyday. So to me the question still remained, what is American culture? I still find this very hard to define, however I feel that it can be defined and taught through explaining the history of the United States. For me, I followed the ICTFL standards of what culture is, in that culture can be defined by the practices, products, and perspectives of a language. Practices would include such things, such as practices of celebrating, practices of behaviors, and practices of everyday life. Products would include such things, such as literature, music, movies, television, and artifacts that contribute to the everyday life of the United States. And finally, perspectives would consist of things such as values and beliefs, and views on a variety of issues. How do we teach all of this in our ESL classroom. It is hard, however as I said before, there is a need to raise cultural awareness on these issues, so that the students can think critically about the environment and surroundings that they now belong to. We can teach culture by teaching students about certain speech patterns that exist in the language, and it is important to teach the different linguistic codes that there are in different areas of the country. Many times, race and gender for example, create differences in how the target language is used. It is important to inform our students of these differences to ensure that we are not only preparing them to be successful in the academic community, but also to be successful in a communicative manner outside of the classroom.

The article also talked about how ESL teachers may stereotype their students, depending on what their cultural background is. This is problematic, yes because not always do these stereotypes hold true, however I believe that it is not a bad thing to stereotype your students because I feel that it gives me a way of understanding their behaviors or perspectives in terms of how they learn and think. However, putting a stereotype on each students is wrong, because when the given stereotype is not true, then we the teachers remain at fault. I believe that we stereotype students to feel more comfortable in understanding them, because it is not always ideal that we understand each and every students and all of their quirks and ways of understanding. It is more important that the teacher understand the culture differences that exist in their students, especially in the differences that the students experience in their school in their home country vs the demands of schooling in the United States.

Again, I sincerely believe that one cannot learn a language without learning the cultural context in which they will be using the language. My question is, Can one be successful in using a target language in a different country if they are unaware of the cultural issues, global and socio-political, that surround that language? I believe the answer is NO! Therefore, it is more than necessary to give the students knowledge about the culture, so that they may implement their language use in appropriate ways.