BLOG ASSIGNMENT

This month has been very important for my professional development, I must tell you  that I didn´t study to be a teacher  so I m an English teacher by accident as Dr Leyah said, but I love my job and I enjoy teaching to my students. All the things,  I know about teaching are product of people like you who are willing to share your knowledge and your experiences with teachers like me. I like learning and trying new things so each time that I have the opportunity I enroll in a new course.

Last year in Mexico I took a course in which I learned about teaching by competencies , they taught us that we must consider the background of our students and that we have to adapt our strategies and techniques to their needs but  the most important was to realized that now we are just facilitators who provide the students with  tools in order they can discover and learn by themselves. I  also learned about learning styles, objectives, rubrics and Bloom Taxonomy but in this summer course I really understood the way everything is applied in a real context, for me it was the clearest example of teaching by competences. At least I understood all the things I had learned by theory.

Regarding to our experience,  most of us have been teaching for some years, everybody has something to share;  it could be an idea, an experience, an activity or a method that was useful for us or even those activities which weren´t so successful. So to be part of this course allowed us to share and learn about our colleagues.

Through  the course we had the opportunity to perform in front of our teachers and peers who gave us feedback to improve our teaching practice which  is very important because in some cases we may think we are doing well but in real is not true at all. As a human being we must accept that we make mistakes, but at the same time we must reflect about our strengths and weaknesses and work on it.

I feel lucky of having this opportunity. I think I was falling in a routine so now I have refreshed my ideas and 

I´m willing to improve my performance with my students but also I commit myself in spreading all that I have learned otherwise this experience wouldn´t have any case.

Testing and assessment

Although we may think both concepts are the same it is not true but we must understand that  both are related and depend on each other.

Today   I learned that asssessment usually takes place during the whole semester and that it is part of the  continuos evaluation process which help us to evaluate our  students performance . 

On the other hand we can talk about testing that will consider tests which  provide us information to know what the students have learned.

We do not have to wait until the end of the semester to evaluate because through the semester we can use both techniques.

 

DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION

Usually we  use a book in our lessons and most of the time we just answer it with our students so their learning can be monotonous,  for this reason we must be able to identify different types of learning in our students and once we have done it, we have to choose and design activities which addressees students needs, and if we have a book we can modify some exercises to become meaningful and useful to develop language skills. It depends on our creativity and the time we dedicate to plan our lessons.

I have learned that the book is just a resource but the way you use it and the way you take advantage of it depends on you as a teacher.

TEACHING TO WRITE

Teaching to write can be difficult due the number of students that we have in each class, but in the class I learned there are somethings we can do to save time, for example we can focus our attention in one aspect and give feedback about it, this feedback doesn't mean that we only focus our attention on the students mistakes but that we can recognize their achievements.

Something that was very interesting for me was the journal because even if the students don´t like to write it is gives the the opportunity to start writing by themselves and without thinking about making mistakes.

THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY

Nowadays technology is playing an important role in society , everyday there are new things to learn and to do  and our students are being part of this process. They like technology and all things related to it, so we must be able to look for material and websites that help us  to improve our teaching method and refresh our ideas. There are so many resources we can get in the web  and the most important thing is that they are real, we just need to look for them.

We just have to get used to using websites, and if it is difficult for us we must remind that we must try step by step, otherwise our methods will never change and perhaps we will lose our students attention.

BLAIRS LIBRARY

It is said that the best way to learn something new and  to learn vocabulary in a second language  is reading, so it is very important that we develop this skill in our students. Unfortunately we have to face different problems in our country because most of our students are not used to read very often, they seem to be interested in so many things but not reading but that is our opportunity to help them to develop this skill.

It can be difficult but no impossible and if we are sure that we can get it,  we will do it. We need to think that we can do it step by step , improving little by little, going from one level to another one,  we can not skip a level because they will get lost .

So it is important that we help our students but there are also some resources that can help us as a teacher to support our students and to get our objective, that is the case of the public libraries where people go to look for some information but I thinks it is also a place to share experiences and to meet people with similar interests as ours.

I am really impressed about the way libraries work here because they are completely different than in Mexico, the one that we visited today is modern and unique , the people who works in it are doing an excellent job so It made me think about the lack of places like these in my country where a library seems to be a quiet and boring place to go but at the same time it helped me to think about different things that can be done in our libraries to improve their service and  to catch people attention.

I realized about the people who work as a volunteer here and I was wondering why it can not be the same in Mexico and I think that it is due to a lack of opportunities to get a job, in my country people work almost all day  to get money to feed their family so they don´t have free time at all and the time they  got , they use it to share with their family. So instead of doing activities as volunteers they like to rest or look for another job to improve their income.

On the other hand there are people who don´t need to work a lot and who don´t do anything during the day so we can start inviting these people to develop programs like the ones that the library runs in our cities, we just need to be creative and eager to change it.

AMERICAN CULTURE

From my point of view there is no way to learn about American culture that being part of it, and I think we are doing well, we have learned too many things, apart of reading a book we had the opportunity to spend a night with an american family that in my case was to share with  a single woman.

I realized that our interests are similar but our lifestyle is different, as we are in our thirties we have some things in common for example our opinion about marriage and family but our lifestyle is different due to the problems that Mexico is facing nowadays, related to economic and security problems.

Our countries and people are different but we must respect our customs and opinions that is the way the people learn about each other and about other cultures.

Sometimes we tend to stereotype  people but I have learned that we must give us the chance to share and to learn about everybody.

I really liked the way she talked to me about different issues in her country and we could compare some problems with my country, she was curious as me so it was a great opportunity to learn and to share our experiences.

I must admit that I was worried about the experience because I did not know what to expect  but it was a great experience.