Reflection-on-values

How reflective am I ?

Roles as Language Teacher/ Ninth task

Roles of metaphors to reflect upon teaching and learning. This metaphor is based on three aspects mentioned by FARRELL, T. (2003).

 1) Teacher as a manager 2) Teacher as "acculturator" 3) Teacher as a professional 

The manager was identified as a role where I was a teacher trying to control what is happening in the classroom. Some of the manager cluster mentioned by FARRELL such as; communication controller, vendor, motivator, presenter. 

Withing communication controller I control classroom communication and students interaction dynamics in order to guide learning some in which is guided on the basis of speaking, writing, reading and listening.

In this line, a vendor is a role used constantly as "it is a role to indicate to the teacher is a seller of the institution" FARRELL, T. (2003).  In that senes, the metaphor shows at the right the teaching selling the ideas and giving information to the community in order to have a balance of the vision and mission of the Institution.  

On the other hand, the role of a presenter is played in this metaphor as presenting specific information such as; lñangauge details. this role makes students learn from the language from the assignment. 

Additionally, the role of a motivator is important as well, the teacher motivates students and helps keep students on task. 

There are roles that I would like to play in the future. One is a teacher as "acculturator" is a role in which teachers engage activities outside the classroom and become accustomed to the local culture. This will help students have different insights about the world, culture, and language. 

Teacher as a collaborator. This role where I share my experiences with peers would help me grow up as a professional as I will advise other EFL teachers.  

First Journal

September 24th, 2019

First journal

This was the first session of my thesis pedagogical intervention, the class started at 7: 10 a.m. I was excited because the main purpose of the class was to “create an atmosphere and motivation about the project”. However, I started getting anxiety because some students got late at the class and after they came I could not start the lesson. Later on, I explained what they were going to do in the first cycle. Unfortunately, they were not sufficiently engaged at the beginning of the class. A student was talking to a peer and it was a situation that disrupts the class. I called those students´ attention. After that, a student was a little angry. Then, in the next step of the lesson they had to tell incorrect practices carried out in the school. In that stage, almost all the students were engaged with the brainstorm. After that activity, students had to choose a classmate to work in the project, most of the students quickly chose the peer. Nerveless, they were four students disagree about the activity. After these two activities carried out in the class, I came up with the conclusion that there were four students with misbehaviors and most of the students were engaged in the activities, so I decided for the next lesson to be more dynamic and have some plan B.

After they decided the peer they were going to work, three of the students asked for clarifications of the meaning of the incorrect practices, that made me think that they were interested in the project and about the tasks they would carry out. Later on that activity the class ended.

After the class finished I was reflecting about that lesson as I didn’t feel comfortable at all. I was thinking that the embraced situation with the two guys at the beginning maybe was not the better way to give a solution as I decided to ignore that student behavior. However, in the next class, there was a rubric to assess students and I decided to talk to him alone, and I advise him about that situation of what he agreed, and he told me to change the behavior, after that, I felt more successful about my teaching.

Mind map "Reflective Teaching and its Impact on Foreign Language Teaching" QUESADA, A. (2005).

The most relevant Reflective Teaching gave by Salomon Au Yeung

Salomon starts telling that no one has taught him how to reflect. In order to go in the right direction. He mentioned that lived different situations in which his friends made him wonder what he was going to do. From that sense, Salomon invited us not to follow others' paths. He also mentioned in his lecture make ourselves questions such as listen to our inner voice as a way to choose a different path. He wondered himself questions such as if he follows the path of others. he would not be as good or same as them.  At that time, he started doing the thing that really liked.

Following In the sequence of his lecture, the speaker asked the participants questions to know more about themselves such as questions as to what do they really want to do? what do they think they are good at? This makes me think that we need to connect reflection into action.  According to Salomon, take action is what makes reflection different. He also told the way he started working as a teacher he realized that teaching for children was really a challenge so he reflected but he did not know what to do and started organizing different work for students. But until he talked to colleagues he knew that he was wrong in his teaching. In that way, we can reflect together to know different perspectives and to know others' experiences. After those reflections and discussions, he knew how to improve in the classroom. We as the teacher have to find the time to reflect on what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong in the classes and how can we improve. Also, we as teachers need spaces to reflect upon our practices and to prepare for students.  In that way, we will be more quality teachers. On other words, we need to reflect on day to day as a journey of being learners.