What Do I Walk Away With?

My Teacher Identity

Teaching Humans

Through my experience in the school I have learned there are two important factors to achieve learning. One is the healthy affection in the learning atmosphere, and the other is to know students’ context. “The affection is the engagement process that every person passes through when is exposed to learning circumstances.  Many theorists (e.g., Lazarus, 1982) consider affect to be post-cognitive. That is, affect is thought to be elicited only after a certain amount of cognitive processing of information has been accomplished. In this view, an affective reaction, such as liking, disliking, evaluation, or the experience of pleasure or displeasure, is based on a prior cognitive process in which a variety of content discriminations are made and features are identified, examined for their value, and weighted for their contributions (Brewin, 1989).” If affection is positive in the classroom, this will promote a positive learning environment where students feel comfortable, accepted, and motivated to learn. In addition to this, knowing your students is the key to have a successful learning, being aware of their sociocultural aspect and characteristics that will give you the guidelines for your teaching practice.

Students need to know that the teacher is happy to be there for them, to help them to learn; for this reason, the teacher’s commitment together with vocation is relevant since pupils enjoying it; since pupils can feel the mood you are in, and this can affect your class positively or negatively. Furthermore, the teacher must create a respectful environment to make learners feel comfortable of being in the classroom; so that, pupils will not be afraid of showing themselves, neither ask asking questions.  Nowadays, it is very common to know about student violence cases, in which students can be really cruel with others. Therefore, the teacher must be aware of their student’s relationship and communication, always promoting comradeship, and consequently construct social values. Moreover, it is important to help our students to develop a healthy self-esteem, according to Robbie Reasoner, founder of the International council for Self-esteem, he established five components of self-esteem that can be treated in the classroom: “Security: knowing that I am safe, physically and emotionally, Identity: knowing who I am, Belonging: knowing others accept me, Purpose: knowing what I want to do and to achieve, Competence: knowing I can. He states: “One reason is that language teaching activities which focus on self-esteem are successful is that they have strong personal meaning for learners” (Robbie Reasoner, 1982). Furthermore, it is relevant that the teacher develop a sense of fairness, since, many times teachers have to presence problematic situations in classes where their opinion is required; for this reason, the teacher must have strong values, and a clear position about morals, helping students to build values that help them to solve their own problems; thus, developing their autonomy, analysis and reasoning. “[The] school becomes itself a form of social life, a miniature community and one in close interaction with other modes of associated experience beyond school walls. All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral” (Adam Lefestein, 2002).

One way of achieving successful student’s learning is to know which their characteristics are: for instance, age, sociocultural, and socioeconomic background, to name but a few. In this way, the teacher has to know which stage of life students are passing through, knowing what mental and physical processes they are facing, thus, according to that knowledge the teacher can determine which learning strategies to use with pupils, and to use topics according to their interest and hobbies. The sociocultural aspect nowadays has become a serious issue for teachers, because of the changing technology. For instance, it is a must for teachers to be up to date about the last technologies that students are using, in order to help them to interact in their own society, with all its changes. “Yet educators can be reasonably confident that we share the social power needed to make our vision of the potential educational uses of new technologies historically significant.” (McClintock Robbie, 1999)

Most of the teachers that I know prefer their students work individually because they are afraid of losing control of the class, so that students get used to working alone. This kind of strategy, decided by the teacher does not allow student to develop the ability of being sociable and solving group problems. We can immediately realized when students are not used to working together because when they are asked to work as a team, they do group work, and according to the article “team work in the classroom”, it explains the following:

Group work: “Members focus mostly on themselves because they are not involved in the planning of their group's objectives and goals.

Team work: “Members feel a sense of ownership towards their role in the group because they committed themselves to goals they helped create” (Team work in the classroom, web resource). In this way, a simple activity like a team work in which students have to work helping each other, understanding that the work of everyone is important and substantial to achieve the goal and at the same time increasing the sense of partnership, feeling part of a group.

All in all, in everyday teacher’s job, they have to face problems that require a fair sense of justice, for that reason it is important that teachers have moral sense and solid values to bear the diversity of situations that may occur inside the classroom, and at the same time, take advantage of these spaces teaching values. Since, teaching is not just teaching students a subject, but it is also to teach values that allow pupils to face life with autonomy, and provide them with social skills. For that to happen, it is necessary to teach in a classroom atmosphere that facilitates learning, and also self-recognition in students. In addition, it is significant for the teacher to be aware of the many characteristics of children and their sociocultural context that reflect their identity. 

References

1) Lefstein, Adam. Thinking Power and Pedagogy Apart Coping with Dicipline in Progressivist School Reform. N.p.: Teacher college Record, 2002. 1627-55. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.

2) McClintock, Robbie. The Educators Manifesto. N.p.: Columbia University, 1999. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.

3) Reasoner, Robbie. Building Self-esteem: A Comprehensive Consulting Psycologist Press. N.p.: n.p., 1982. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.

4) "Team Work in the Classroom." NDT Resource Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2012. Path: http://www.ndt-ed.org/TeachingResources/ClassroomTips/Teamwork.htm.

5) Wales, Jimmy. Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. N.p., 21 Oct. 2012. Web. 18 Nov. 2012.

Reflecting on a Video Lesson

Teacher's Identity Video

Reflection about My Expectations

According to the expectations that I had at the begging of the semester, I think that they were accomplished; since, I asked for meaningful tasks that gave me the time to reflect and realized about mistakes and make me expand my viewpoints about pedagogy. Furthermore, I wanted to read interesting texts that allow us as a group to discuss substantial topics for our career, so there where fascinating reading; such as, “Thinking Power and Pedagogy” and “Becoming a Thinking Thinker”, which were very pleasant to read. In short, for me this was a stimulating semester, because it gives me useful knowledge for my formation as a teacher.

Poster Session