9/27 Approaches to classroom investigation in teaching

9/27
For today's lesson, we looked at the article "Approaches to classroom investigation in teaching".
Below are some concepts I especially liked:
-Reflect is the source of personal growth.
-The two main reasons for keeping a journal are:
(1)To reflect later. (2)The process of writing it triggers insights about teaching.
-Review your journals regularly, and the important elements that you neglected may surface and help you enhance your teaching.
-Lesson Plan and Lesson Report serves different purposes. In a Lesson Report, you list out all the possible methods you could use and then mark down the one you actually used, by doing this you can compare your teaching method among the pool of choices. In a Lesson Plan, it only records what methods you use, it does not show what other methods you could've used, but it serves the purpose of systematically recording what you did so you can later reflect on it.
-Other than doing a survey or audio recording, one can also use interview to better understand a student's needs.
-The checklists for the Reflection Journal looked very useful. Some of my favourites... also ones that I need to focus more on are:
1.Did you discover anything new about your teaching?
2.What changes do you think you should make in your teaching?
3.What do you think students really learned from the lesson?
4.Where am I in my professional development?
5. What satisfaction does language teaching give me?
*A short reminder for myself: Do try to record the reflection of the class on the same day, or else you may forget the many innovative ideas and reflections you came up with and you may not find time to do it anymore.

9/20 The planning of a successful teaching career

9/20 The planning of a successful teaching career

Today, it's been our honour to have two experienced teachers come and share their experiences with us.

The first teacher focused more about the details of practical teaching, while the second teacher focused more about the importance of attitude when teaching. 

The precious concepts I conceived from the lectures:

-Define your Belief in Teaching and Act upon it!

-Love what you Choose, and Choose what you Love!

-Delight yourself in your teaching: be jubilant at the smallest progress of your students and beam at the biggest efforts you've put in your teaching plans...knowing all this will make a better person out of you and all your students!

-Be familiar with the methods to teaching, for only when you know the highest standards of it will you reach near the ideal state of teaching.

-When taking an essay test upon teaching, remember to first list out the method and then the practical examples.

-When you are taking an internship, be active and eagerly absorb the experiences from the experienced teachers... these experiences will save you years of searching and stumbling!

-When you are taking an internship you should take photos to keep a record of your process of learning.

-When you are taking an internship, you should see it as a formal and professional duty, do your best in everything, give yourself the highest standard and people will respect you and help you.

-When you are teaching, you must do a really thorough job of preparing for the lessons, and when you are on stage you must answer the students' questions with sincerity...do not lie about what you do not know... you can be candid about not knowing and come back to the question next time when you have found the answer.

-When teaching, it is important you discuss with your colleges for ideas, and that you all share the handouts and other teaching resources together.

-When teaching, you can handout feedback sheets to see if there's anything you can improve on.

-Being considerate to your students, your student's parents, and your colleges is a good thing, but when you don't hold on to your principles... the good becomes sour. 

-Our "Attitude" is the key to making our life and our teaching 100% effective, meaningful, and fulfilling.

-When you face your students, you should have the attitude of the following saying: "I am not a teacher, but a fellow teacher of whom you asked the way." Because one day they may all become a president, a doctor, a mayor, a lawyer, a reporter, a taxi driver, a professional farmer and all those important people who will drive our future forward... so we must respect them and keep them on track when they are still students.

-Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul: "Teaching is the choicest of professions, because everybody who is anybody was taught how to be a somebody by a teacher."

-You have to innovate and work hard... and your teaching will keep up with the trends of time... if you add to the innovation and hard work with “passion” then you will be ahead of the trends of time.

A small suggestion to both of the teachers:

The first teacher shared her experience in a rather firm tone- this has its pro and con; the good thing about it is that it'll push the teachers-to-be to be punctual and responsible when in internship and in formal teaching. The bad thing about a tone being to firm is that it might be mistaken as arrogance, people will feel they are not respected if they sense an air of arrogance... and in the end, they may have a hard time absorbing your ideas, as brilliant as they may be. However, she still had her very practical experiences expressed in a clear way and fluent way.

The second teacher smiled a lot, and added some fun elements to her presentation. One can tell that the flow of the presentation has not been practiced enough beforehand, making it not so fluent, and also making the presenter nervous... we can tell she was nervous for she scratched her hair and chin often. Therefore it may be suggested that she can spend some time reviewing the flow of her presentation beforehand. However, she still did express authentic experience upon the attitude towards teaching. 

Testing

This is a funny video from veggie-tales: