It feels like only yesterday when I started my first day of teaching, set out from my home with a packed lunch and a book entitled ‘Teaching English For Dummies‘. The time flies very fast and it’s already beginning of the fourth semester. My life as M.Ed student has always been filled with surprises and difficulties. Sometimes, we are left to face these challenges alone (because we are adult learners). We then begin to think how much education has contributed much to the success of others. For this, I believe that my education as a young child has contributed much to who I am today. I believe that English was one of the many subjects that have helped shaped my future. Talking about belief, last weeks, Dr Nabila did mention about how I go about teaching my students. How effective have I been as a teacher and if I have not been effective, what would I do to improve myself.
How do I teach my students? Well I feel that one of my goals as a teacher is to help and guide my students so that they can teach themselves. I also beliefs, practices and attitudes are important for understanding and developing educational processes. They are closely linked to my strategies as teacher for coping with challenges in my daily professional life and general well-being. The beliefs, practices and attitudes help to shape my students’ learning environment and influence student motivation and achievement. As teacher, my beliefs on how I should teach my students involve strong emotion and judgment and therefore, I am quite resistant to change the way I teach them. Teaching involves multiple, simultaneous decisions related to content pedagogy, student relationships, praise and discipline, materials of instruction, and interactions with colleagues. Teachers do not possess templates to guide their work. Rather, teachers draw upon past experiences and their own ways of approaching problems. Hence, we develop our own solutions based on our personal understanding of the circumstances, an understanding that is rooted in our belief systems. For instance, some teachers might think that they must stand in front of the classroom to monitor the students’ learning and understanding. Actually not necessarily they must stand in front of the classroom but they might as well walk around the classroom. Some might also believe that they are the one who always do the work such as correcting, marking, preparing task for the students. It is because, by giving them task, and correcting them, the teachers are able to check the students’ understanding and maybe re-teach the lesson when necessary. Then again, teachers nowadays prefer to practice peer editing where their peers are responsible for assessing their friends’ piece of work. Students must have a clear understanding of what they are to look for in their peers' work. It also encourages students to become independent learners and can increase their motivation.
There is saying;
“There are many kinds of seeds in us, both good and bad. Some were planted
during our lifetime, and some were transmitted by our parents, our
ancestors, and our society. Every time we practice mindful living, we
plant healthy seeds and strengthen the healthy seeds already in us.
Healthy seeds function similarly to antibodies. If we plant wholesome,
healing, refreshing seeds, they will take care of the negative seeds,
even without our asking them. To succeed, we need to cultivate a good
reserve of refreshing seeds.”
by Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
There are many questions from the society nowadays whether the teacher is qualified enough to teach or whether a teacher possess a good quality in teaching the students. Those question are certainly an intriguing one, and, for a teacher teaching at urban school like me, a pressing one. Our society these days are divided in to two different way of thinking on the education. Some believe that communicative methods are better than the traditional method of teaching but yet these two methods are both a successful way. In my opinion, every method in teaching is the same because the teacher delivers the same message to the students. Therefore there are pros and cons to it. The pros for humanistic traditional methods are, teachers shouldered too much of responsibilities for teaching in the classroom to make sure everything they thought were understood by the student. Thus it was a good method, where there was efficient communication between teacher and students. There was also the typical way and a controllable class where the teacher would teach on the whiteboard, explained, asks students to copy and made sure students paid attention and listen. I’m free to express myself and give tons of work with my 1 Melur class (of course good class) but, with my other class (the poor one), I have to be more animated. I need to dig up their ideas and induce them to speak up and give responses. Besides that, the traditional way in disciplining students in school and teaching them was an effective way in building a good characteristic student where students were afraid of their teacher and respect them. Well, it works for me though!
Nevertheless, we as teacher need to be creative and vary our teaching method. I do sometimes find students who are resistant to or unfamiliar with learner-centered teaching. By using Vigotsky’s theory and scaffold resistance learners, I usually use activities with small groups. They will have some individual activities and then some group activities. For both they will get credit. Students notice that working with peers really helps them to understand better the material and as a bonus, they get better marks. Because I allow them to work in groups, I have noticed that at the beginning they want to work by themselves but after having the discussion in small groups, they get to know each other and find out that it is worth working in groups. I think it really helps to create ‘learning communities’ among the students and it means that when they come to class, they feel as part of the social interaction and networking going on (Wood, Bruner, Ross, 1976). I believe that doing this (scaffolding) really makes a significant difference in the level of student resistance in my classes.
Besides that, in order to have the students to become communicatively competent, how do I go about teaching them is by creating a learning environment in my language class. Sometimes, before I start the lesson of the day, I observe my surrounding. Few questions revolve around my mind. Whether the physical space of the classroom is managed as I prepare the classroom for the students. Is the space warm and inviting? Do the students have access to necessary materials? Are the distracting features of a room eliminated? In my opinion, the most essential part of encouraging communicatively competent is the teachers who encourage students to do their best and to be excited about what they are going to learn. To be motivated, students must see the worth of the work that they are doing and the work others do. I demonstrate the value and show my students how their work is worthwhile and is connected to things that are important for them, including other learning and interests. One way that I use to encourage effort is through specific praise, telling my students specifically what it is that they are doing that is worthwhile and good. In my language class, there are lots of movable chairs, frequently, during my lesson, I ask students to sit in a semicircle so that they can see one another. Research reported by Beard and Hartley (1984) shows that people tend to talk to the person sitting opposite them rather than the people sitting next to each other and tend not to talk to one another.
What makes a great and effective teacher? Teaching is one of the most complicated jobs today. It demands broad knowledge of subject matter, enthusiasm, a caring attitude and a love of learning, and a desire to make a difference in the lives of young people. For instance, because I am the class teacher and subject teacher who teach English in that class, it arouses my interest in providing and creating self-access facility at the back of the class. It is just as simple as a cupboard or shelf containing activities that students can do on their own in order to give them extra practice or extension to what they do in class. The materials include magazine articles with questions and answers, puzzles, quizzes, graded readers and so on. Besides, the students are encouraged to bring in or produce materials for the self-access facility. In my opinion, self-access materials have the advantage of allowing the students to work at their own pace on an activity targeted to their needs which is not always possible in a regular classroom. If they finish their class work early or want to work on something during their free time, they can choose something from the self-access facility. As my students become more self-aware, I hope they will recognize that they need extra practice in certain areas and this facility will make sure that they are assisted in finding appropriate activities. Study after study shows the single most important factor determining the quality of the education a student receives is the quality of an effective teacher teaches.
However, not all teaching methods that I have applied work for all the lessons. Sometimes, I found my lessons were interesting and effective but sometimes it did not. There are also some of the factors that could hinder communicative classroom. Changes such as introducing to new syllabuses and new teaching method or to new peer groups and surroundings may leave the learners feeling emotionally insecure and vulnerable. For example, early last year, KBSM has introduced new syllabus of English Literature for Form 1. It is not only limiting the communicative environment in the classroom among the learners but sometimes the teachers as well. For example myself, I have undergone the course for English Literature new Cycle and need to teach the students the new syllabus. Surprisingly, the course was only conducted for two days and we have to come back to school and teach all literature elements of the new poems, short story, and graphic novel. I felt like I did not have enough exposure towards literature aspects and yet need to teach my students. Other factor that could hinder communicative classroom is high distractibility. For example in my school, the students are loaded with abundant of stuff. They might face this with difficulties and find it’s extra hard to settle the work. Other factor might be something on the background of the students. These include a poor or depressed background in which the child has no encouragement to read or to use language , in which there are no facilities for home work or private study , and in which the values the school are rejected and perhaps even held up to ridicule . In my school there are many cases of actual physical rejection, brought about by a broken home or by any other family problem. Some of the learners are lack of motivation. Motivation is one of the basic factors of participation. Motivation in simply language means interest. Learning is directly proportional to our interest in learning. Some students, they might have the feeling of fears. Sometimes, fear limits us even before we get startled. We do not try our best, because we are afraid of failure and perhaps ridicule.
Yes, I admitted sometimes I might not be an effective teacher and not having effective classroom learning. But most of the time, my ineffective lesson is due to the non participative students. Well, there is always room for improvement. Like what I have implemented in my classroom, I identify those students who have lack of lacking participation in the class due to their weaknesses. I always give extra and proper attention towards those students and involve them in different types of activities with peers. Besides, I encourage parents to give proper attention towards their children by having regular contact with me. The class should properly be cleaned and well decorated especially with English materials. In my opinion, proper sitting arrangement in the classroom can boost up students' participation so that students may have no difficulty in viewing the whiteboard, or listening to what I said. As a form teacher, I always ensure the smaller students will be seating at the front rows in order to have effective learning. Besides, by putting them seating next to different races might encourage them not to use their mother tongue all the time. Students who are facing language problems I gradually use with them a lot of activities involving listening and speaking such as presentations, dialogues, develop peer to peer relationship among students and other activities should be conducted in the classroom for increasing confidence.
I have also noticed that many teachers live and die by the student book. I mean, they do all the activities in the books and they do all the exercises in the teacher’s book. There is no personalization and students find it difficult to relate. Apparently, (for me) teachers are supposed to abandon their textbook and create their own banks of interesting and creative tasks. Personally, I do what works best for my students. In order to improve teaching, a good teacher need to adapt, able to negotiate and see what the students want because they are your audience and your clients. If the teachers only work with the student using books all the time, then they become predictable and the classes become boring. If I were a student and had a teacher that only did the workbook then I would miss many classes because I can just stay at home and do the same thing! Where is the value in coming to class to learn something from the teacher if I could do it on my own? The students nowadays learn for examination and I think that it (examination targets) kills the joy and excitement of some teachers in implementing or using creative tasks in their classroom.
I confessed those days I was not a good teacher. Because of the situation and the management of my school that kept pushing all the teachers around, I decided to turn towards the ‘easy way’ by focusing my classes on grammar and most of the time I conversed in mother tongue with the weaker classes (easy for me to convey message!). As a result, some students did not feel much motivated toward my class, I mean, towards English language. During those times, nothing much I could do. The situation pushed me to implement the traditional methodology. There are other factors that trigger me to change 360 degrees. Now, I feel guilty and regret of my own attitudes because I realize that I could have done something better for those girls. I am now more resourceful teacher, and aware of my social responsibility and I have been able to develop many meaningful strategies to work with my students. However, many issues rose that argue the classroom activities should as far as possible mirror the real world and use real world or authentic sources as the basis of classroom learning. Issues that aroused are authentic materials often contains tough and inappropriate language. Besides, authentic materials are burden for teachers. Then again, since English KBSM textbook has become much more authentic ‘look’, some reading passages in the textbook are design to look like magazine articles or real printed postcard, real menu, and even flight ticket. Very interesting!
Well, for me, in the beginning, I had a great challenge to change from the teacher-centered to the learner-centered approach. After years of teaching, I managed to focus on learners' learning; however I did not totally cast away my authority. I just tried to hit balance with my goal and objective to train active and independent learners. It was a tough mission, as you can imagine. I started it small, little by little. It's unlikely to change students' habit of depending on teachers to "feed" them overnight, you know. So, we need to have patience to teach them "How to Learn on Their Own." During that ‘dark era’, I believed that learners are unique and distinct. Their individuality and uniqueness must be attended to and taken into account if they are to engage in and take responsibility for their own learning. So, I had tons of patience those days. Now, I’m fine and comfortable with both methods. I think being very available and approachable teacher is important. Even though I try and train my students to be self-sufficient in their learning as much as possible, when they are starting out with the student-centered learning things I think they need to know that I am there as a support to help them if needed. Then they may be more willing to go out on a limb and try new things.
