In the brief time I have been teaching, I have had the marvelous opportunity to work in two different contexts.  From January to May of 2015, I carried out my teaching practice in the public regional bilingual school, Sergio Ramírez de Arellano.  I taught ninth grade to 22 students.  Some had different deficiencies in English.  Reading was not a problem for any of the students.  They were able to read and comprehend text at the ninth grade level without any difficulty.  Writing and speaking, however, presented many challenges for them.  The girls in the classroom were generally hesitant when speaking, while the boy’s weakness was writing. For these students, there needed to be a balance of both speaking and writing in the classroom activities. 

            My second teaching experience is currently taking place.  Upon commencing my graduate students in English Education at the UPRM, I was awarded a Teaching Assistantship to instruct a course at the university level.  During my first year as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA), I taught Ingl 3201/3202: English Reading and Composition I and II.  These courses usually contain anywhere from 25 to 30 undergraduate students whose English is limited.  For these classes, we develop student’s written, oral, and reading skills in English through the use of speaking logs, reading stories or essays, and writing argumentative and literary analyses. 

            During my second year in the Masters’ of Arts in English Education (MAEE) program, I was changed to teach the Intermediate English course (Ingl 3103/3104). During this semester, I was able to work with mainly composition in the classroom. This course places a strong focus on writing in the classroom.  Students were able to write about four different genres: personal narrative, informative, rhetorical analyses, and argumentative.

For me, the role of the school is, by the time students’ graduate high school, to create critically thinking individuals.  By promoting critical thinking at an early stage, schools prepare students to further their thirst for knowledge in whatever area they wish to pursue, be it by enrolling in university, taking courses for their profession, or beginning to work and learn in the process.  As a teacher, I wish to promote critical thinking in both an academic and creative environment, allowing the students to demonstrate their knowledge of both language and content through: writing, speech, art, and multimedia, such as music.  These interpretations, while mainly used in-classroom, should be promoted to be done outside of the classroom space. 

In the classroom, I wish to promote an environment of respect and trust, respect between myself and the students, respect among the students, and self-respect.  By promoting respect, I aim for the classroom to be an open space for students to share their thoughts and struggles with no fear of judgment particularly in relation to their language use.  For instance, when the students complete their speaking logs with me, where I speak with them in English one on one outside of class time, they learn to trust me on both an academic and personal level. 

            For my courses, I also wish to promote an environment of active dialogue amongst myself and my students. As Paulo Freire points out in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own” (2005, p. 81).  In addition, he points out the advantage of how “[people] who develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire, 2005, p. 83).  He argues that it is through these critical perceptions that students learn the bigger lessons.  I want students to be the focus point in the classroom, to have an active role every day.  I want them to be able ask hard questions of the reading and try to explore the answers themselves with each other by using each other’s strengths to analyze or create in the classroom.  I want them to be able to take what they have learned in the classroom and use it at home, at work, in other classes, and with each other. 

            Active participation and collaboration is the key to a successful classroom, in my opinion. I want students to be able to help one another in their weaknesses according to their strengths and not perceive themselves as being any less than another student.  I wish to promote the use the Community Language Learning (CLL) teaching approach in which the students do not necessarily look to me to learn, but to their peers.  CLL focuses on the communication aspects of language learning (Larsen-Freeman, 1987, p. 58).  CLL “focuses on making language acquisition meaningful on a personal as well as an intellectual level. The teacher functions as a "coach," establishing a group learning environment which balances the students' need to belong and their need to assert themselves” (Ryding Lentzner, 1979, p. 103). The main point of CLL is for the students to integrate themselves into the community of the classroom. 

For Ingl3202, the main subject of the course is Gender and Sexuality, emphasizing the LGBTTQIA[1] community.  For this, I put into practice John Dewey’s pragmatic view of the student’s relationship to a community, in which the student needs to comprehend the problems in which the community ze[2] is living in is going through.  Most students have had no prior education about gender and sexuality in schools.  It is only when they reach the college level that the subject is potentially approached.  Students have the intellectual knowledge and maturity to understand the material, however, schools and parents would often prefer to ignore the so-called “controversial” topic.

Lastly, I look to address different ways in which students can express their understanding of the material.  As Howard Gardner proposes in his theory of multiple intelligences, each student is different from the other and all learn differently.  Gardner looks at 7 multiple intelligences: linguistic, visual-spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and logical.  Each student develops his own learning style through these multiple intelligences according to their own personality.  By adapting and including differentiated instruction in the classroom, I can look at each student and promote their individuality.

 

[1] LGBTTQIA stands for Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Intersex, Asexual community.  The term has since grown to now incorporate more terminology.

[2] “Ze” is a gender neutral pronoun