Please peruse my example lesson plan.
Teaching Philosophy
When I am at my best, I am a student-centered teacher, with high expectations for my students and for myself, and am focused on continually improving.
Student centered teaching looks different when there’s five people in the class versus twenty seven or forty. But, there are a couple of classroom practices that I have regardless of situation. First, I (almost always) learn the names of every one of my students on the first day of class. It seems like a little and insignificant thing to do, but it goes a long way. This helps me remember that each of my students is an individual with vastly different life experiences, abilities, needs, and motivations. For the students, when I do this, it seems to make them comfortable and they open up. Second, when they share their experiences, abilities, needs, and motivations, I do my best to listen to them and adapt content in my course to address their needs or provide them with additional information or resources outside of coursework. I also let students know that their voices will be heard by regularly asking for feedback, and when the feedback is within reason and does not forfeit the quality of the class, then I make changes. I do this because this is the way that I would want to be treated. I also believe that this fits in with best practices since we know that teacher expectations and student expectations can differ on what is effective language teaching (Brown, 2009, p.57). By listening to student feedback, I hope to make students more receptive to my expectations as well.
Being student centered doesn’t mean being a pushover. Rather, it means having respect for your students, getting to know where my students are, what they’re capable of, and then set goals that are challenging, but attainable for them. I’ve been lucky enough to receive training in and to spend quite a bit of time discussing the creation and implementation of student learning objectives with fellow language teachers. Through coursework, group work, training, and discussions, I’ve been introduced to and now use a range of pedagogical tools such as backwards curriculum design, thematic unit design, as well as ACTFL and CEFR standards, and combine them with eclectic, but principled, set of language teaching methods such as Performed Culture, Task Based Language Teaching, TPR, and TPRS.
I believe that a strong version of TBLT that follows Long’s (2016) ten principles is a best fit for my current teaching and administrative responsibilities: teaching Language for Specific Purposes, particularly technical English for engineers. Research into the needs of the students as advocated by Van den Branden (2016, p. 241) is essential for identifying the nonlinguistic tasks that my students will need to be able to complete. Doing so will allow me to set real world tasks and objectives for my classes, which in turn will lead to designing activities that are truly preparing my students for what they will experience outside of the classroom. In practice, this will take time and a large amount of research to do effectively, as illustrated in O’Connell’s (2015) police traffic stop task. But, based on Bryfonski & McKay (2017)’s meta-analysis, it appears that TBLT is worth the time and effort.
Finally, I have high expectations for myself. I am constantly working to improve (1) my teaching abilities, (2) my knowledge of the languages that I am teaching, (3) my knowledge of second language acquisition, and (4) my knowledge the fields that I try to prepare my students for. I believe that Kumaravadivelu’s call for teachers to self-observe, self-analyze, and self-evaluate is reasonable and necessary (as paraphrased in Hall (2016, p. 219.)) This is why I am continuing to take graduate courses, why I attend conferences, and why I take on additional responsibilities. Despite the wide range of tasks that I take on, I try to complete all of them with a high degree of quality. With that, I also have high expectations for myself in terms of honesty, integrity, and empathy. So, I admit my limitations and weaknesses, such as not being familiar with the language required in the field of engineering, and therefore do my best to connect students with material from that field, other students or with faculty in their area. I also try and learn new things, like languages, RStudio, ATLAS.ti, so that I am better able to empathize with my students and remember what can make things difficult for students.
Based on these beliefs and experiences, I do my best to reflect constantly on my students needs and how my courses and their design is or is not helping them achieve their goals. To improve, I need to constantly be analyzing my work, learning new approaches, and experimenting to find the best fit for my students.
References:
Brown, A. V. (2009). Students' and teachers' perceptions of effective foreign language teaching: A comparison of ideals. The Modern Language Journal, 93(1), 46-60.
Bryfonski, L., & McKay, T. H. (2017). TBLT implementation and evaluation: A meta-analysis. Language Teaching Research, First Published December 22, 2017, 1-30.
Hall, G. (2016). Method, methods and methodology. Historical trends and current debates. In Hall, G., The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 209-223). New York: Routledge.
Long, M. H. (2016). In defense of tasks and TBLT: Nonissues and real issues. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 36, 5-33.
O’Connell, S. P. (2015). A task-based language teaching approach to the police traffic stop. TESL Canada Journal, 31, 116.
Van den Branden, K. (2016). Task-based language teaching. In Hall, G., The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 238-251). New York: Routledge.
Teaching Philosophy
When I am at my best, I am a student-centered teacher, with high expectations for my students and for myself, and am focused on continually improving.
Student centered teaching looks different when there’s five people in the class versus twenty seven or forty. But, there are a couple of classroom practices that I have regardless of situation. First, I (almost always) learn the names of every one of my students on the first day of class. It seems like a little and insignificant thing to do, but it goes a long way. This helps me remember that each of my students is an individual with vastly different life experiences, abilities, needs, and motivations. For the students, when I do this, it seems to make them comfortable and they open up. Second, when they share their experiences, abilities, needs, and motivations, I do my best to listen to them and adapt content in my course to address their needs or provide them with additional information or resources outside of coursework. I also let students know that their voices will be heard by regularly asking for feedback, and when the feedback is within reason and does not forfeit the quality of the class, then I make changes. I do this because this is the way that I would want to be treated. I also believe that this fits in with best practices since we know that teacher expectations and student expectations can differ on what is effective language teaching (Brown, 2009, p.57). By listening to student feedback, I hope to make students more receptive to my expectations as well.
Being student centered doesn’t mean being a pushover. Rather, it means having respect for your students, getting to know where my students are, what they’re capable of, and then set goals that are challenging, but attainable for them. I’ve been lucky enough to receive training in and to spend quite a bit of time discussing the creation and implementation of student learning objectives with fellow language teachers. Through coursework, group work, training, and discussions, I’ve been introduced to and now use a range of pedagogical tools such as backwards curriculum design, thematic unit design, as well as ACTFL and CEFR standards, and combine them with eclectic, but principled, set of language teaching methods such as Performed Culture, Task Based Language Teaching, TPR, and TPRS.
I believe that a strong version of TBLT that follows Long’s (2016) ten principles is a best fit for my current teaching and administrative responsibilities: teaching Language for Specific Purposes, particularly technical English for engineers. Research into the needs of the students as advocated by Van den Branden (2016, p. 241) is essential for identifying the nonlinguistic tasks that my students will need to be able to complete. Doing so will allow me to set real world tasks and objectives for my classes, which in turn will lead to designing activities that are truly preparing my students for what they will experience outside of the classroom. In practice, this will take time and a large amount of research to do effectively, as illustrated in O’Connell’s (2015) police traffic stop task. But, based on Bryfonski & McKay (2017)’s meta-analysis, it appears that TBLT is worth the time and effort.
Finally, I have high expectations for myself. I am constantly working to improve (1) my teaching abilities, (2) my knowledge of the languages that I am teaching, (3) my knowledge of second language acquisition, and (4) my knowledge the fields that I try to prepare my students for. I believe that Kumaravadivelu’s call for teachers to self-observe, self-analyze, and self-evaluate is reasonable and necessary (as paraphrased in Hall (2016, p. 219.)) This is why I am continuing to take graduate courses, why I attend conferences, and why I take on additional responsibilities. Despite the wide range of tasks that I take on, I try to complete all of them with a high degree of quality. With that, I also have high expectations for myself in terms of honesty, integrity, and empathy. So, I admit my limitations and weaknesses, such as not being familiar with the language required in the field of engineering, and therefore do my best to connect students with material from that field, other students or with faculty in their area. I also try and learn new things, like languages, RStudio, ATLAS.ti, so that I am better able to empathize with my students and remember what can make things difficult for students.
Based on these beliefs and experiences, I do my best to reflect constantly on my students needs and how my courses and their design is or is not helping them achieve their goals. To improve, I need to constantly be analyzing my work, learning new approaches, and experimenting to find the best fit for my students.
References:
Brown, A. V. (2009). Students' and teachers' perceptions of effective foreign language teaching: A comparison of ideals. The Modern Language Journal, 93(1), 46-60.
Bryfonski, L., & McKay, T. H. (2017). TBLT implementation and evaluation: A meta-analysis. Language Teaching Research, First Published December 22, 2017, 1-30.
Hall, G. (2016). Method, methods and methodology. Historical trends and current debates. In Hall, G., The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 209-223). New York: Routledge.
Long, M. H. (2016). In defense of tasks and TBLT: Nonissues and real issues. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 36, 5-33.
O’Connell, S. P. (2015). A task-based language teaching approach to the police traffic stop. TESL Canada Journal, 31, 116.
Van den Branden, K. (2016). Task-based language teaching. In Hall, G., The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 238-251). New York: Routledge.