CONCEPTUALIZING TEACHING ACTS

1. What do you usually do as teacher? With what kind of rationale?

My experience as an English teacher has given me a wide range of elements to support the idea of living my professional art surrounding a single word: ART. Going through a lot of circumstances has supported my own idea that learning English as a foreign language has to be more a delightful experience, rather than an academic process to complete a set of requirements

As explained in my teaching metaphor, I always squeeze the brain of my students. Having sequenced knowledge, most of the students where I am working now, sink when facing real situations, what we know as Problematic Situations. So, my students have to push themselves when giving an opinion, at the same time I offer exercises to enjoy the language learning.

2. What is your mind engagement like in the professional exercise of teaching?

Constant reflection is my personal law when facing the teaching epoch (Pre – while – post). Since entering the current master’s program, I have deeply understood reading, studying beyond the basic requirements and going deeper into information, is the key to succeed in this field (As in any other I guess). This is why, my mind engagement focuses on constantly improve the activities I have found meaningful in different groups. I like mastering activities and not changing just by fashion.

3. How would you characterize your professional, personal and experiential knowledge of teaching?

There is one key factor that I have learned to value though experience: EXPERIENCE. Regardless the repetition of the word, my personal development has been really enriching due to those mistakes I have made since the beginning of my days as an English teacher. Step  by step, mistake after mistake, has led me through an experiential path that has given me a delightful experience when facing any group of students, whether they like English or not.

4. How do you see the relationship between theory, research and practice?

 There is something basic when moving forward in your life: You need to know the history, in order not to commit the same mistakes, but to improve the good results you have already had. In this way, practice of teaching English needs to go through an initial stage of understanding what has already happened in a particular context. In this sense, after consulting the theory, research on-action and research in-action is really important to understand your students’ interests. Once you know what kind of fruits your students like, you can create the best fruit salad to delight your students’ palate.

5. To what extent is there a cause-effect relationship between teaching and learning?

Learning is a constant process that can or cannot depend on teaching. Of course, when relating teaching to learning, there is going to be a highly noticeable improvement, but only when contextualizing the knowledge in matter. To example this, teaching seasons in Neiva is kind of low-representative, than taking Latin-American  students a whole year to the US, where they will feel all 4 seasons, instead of learning them by heart. This is why, teaching needs to be contextualized to become some kind of acquisition. 

REFERENCE

Kumaramadivelu, B (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. Yale University Press