My Beliefs as a Secondary English Teacher

I am an English teacher for many reasons. First, it is a subject I value myself. The language arts teach students how to read, write, and effectively communicate. Students become trained in how to recognize literary devices and proper grammar. Hopefully, they also graduate with some appreciation for literature, poetry and the arts. However, the most imperative thing we can do as English teachers is enable our students to become critically thinking and humane people. As an English teacher, my goal is to give my students the ability to better understand themselves and others—to expose them to literature that expands their thinking and helps create global perspectives otherwise unavailable. In my class, students will have a space to examine the ethos of their decisions. English class gives students the critical lenses that better equip them for the world’s challenges.  As Robert Lawrence Smith, former head-master of Quaker Sidwell School in Washington D.C. states, “A good school’s aim is to help each student respond to the best that is in him or her.” As an English teacher, I aspire to be the facilitator of this development for every student.

Informed Teaching Methods

This semester I confirmed and discovered new beliefs that create the foundation of my teaching philosophy. I firmly believe that student engagement in the classroom is paramount. One way to ensure this is to empower students by giving them more responsibility in their own learning. My job is to show them that this is possible by getting them to move, speak, interact, think and teach one another.  In other words, my students will be as active as possible in their learning. As Burke and many other authors I have read this semester advise, our classrooms should be centered around students taking part in meaning construction. Each student has a role in interpreting the meaning of the subject matter at hand, be it a text, film, poem or play.

This construction will take shape in many creative forms in my classroom: students will be acting, reading aloud, writing and exercising creativity whenever possible. Dramatizing texts, for example, allows for students to actively create a three-dimensional space from a certain work, integrating their take on what the text means and how it should be presented. They must first digest the material in order to carry out this presentation. When substituting for an English teacher last semester, I led a lesson on poetry. I separated the class into groups of three or four and had them choose a poem to analyze. After they spent a considerable amount of time with the poems, they presented them to the class. The results were phenomenal. The class watched as each group performed what literally happened in the poem, then explained the implied or underlying intention of the poet. Both the presenters and the audience experienced the poems in a valuable way completely unavailable if just read independently at their desks. Also, preparing for an audience ensured a higher quality result from the students. They were motivated to take on the task because they wanted to do well in front of their peers. This leads into another component of my teaching philosophy: authenticity.

Authenticity

Any opportunity I give students to learn for an authentic or real-life reason, the better. Inevitably, this is what we as teachers should strive to accomplish, never leaving behind the question: How will what I am teaching help my students as people in their everyday lives? As a teacher, I hope to infuse my assignments and projects with authenticity. If students see how a project can be applied outside of class in a meaningful way, the more motivated they will be to carry out the assignment. Students can write for real audiences, for example, including: letters to the editor or representatives, book reviews, on-line publications, literary magazines, and scholarship or college admission essays. According to O’Brien, one great way to motivate and engage students when reading Shakespeare is to hold community performances. The motivation to do well and the quality of the product will improve if students know there is an audience on the other side of their efforts.

The basics of the English language arts classroom pose a bigger challenge in creating authentic learning experiences. It is difficult to show students how proper grammar directly benefits their lives, as it is a part of a bigger picture of success. But learning skills such as grammar, spelling, and vocabulary in authentic ways in the classroom is key to acquiring these skills.

When teaching grammar, I will use a framework based loosely on the mini-lesson model.  As Weaver cites, both Atwell and Caulkins suggest mini-lessons as an alternative to traditional grammar instruction. Mini-lessons are effective as they are brief, direct, and, most importantly, conducted in response to a need I determine from my students’ writing. When I give grammar instruction, however, my technique will vary from this, as I believe strongly in having students practice the taught skill immediately after instruction. The idea behind mini-lessons is that students to show they know the skill when ready. It will appear in future writing assignments. Skill retention, however, greatly depends upon immediate practice. For example, in efforts to both reinforce and assess their retention of a preposition lesson last fall, I gave my students a worksheet to complete (see resource portfolio). Not only did they have to write in the correct preposition for each item themselves, but they needed to create the rest of the sentences. This forced them to think more creatively than a cloze worksheet would require. This also made a nice link to the next lesson on prepositional phrases.  

I also plan to teach vocabulary in an authentic way. I tried a technique I hope to continue with my ESOL students this past fall. In efforts to get away from prescribed lists of overly-academic words I found in most vocabulary books, I asked them to write down new words as they came across them in their mainstream classes. I thought a self-created list would be more applicable as they would likely see these words again. This is especially important as many ESOL students struggle with academic language. I then gave them a modified version of the word mapping handout from the Fairfax County ESL curriculum guide to exercise each word (see resource portfolio). The word map worksheet has them use the word in various ways, determine synonyms and antonyms, and translate it into their own language. After word mapping each word for homework, they brought them to class and added them to a continuing list. Since we were in our poetry unit, I made these into large poetry magnets for the class so they could continue to see and manipulate the words everyday. A form of this worksheet could also be used for native speakers trying to build vocabulary.

Another way I will ensure the authenticity of what we do in class is to discuss this frankly with my students. One of the reasons why I enjoy working with adolescents is the ability to have them think metacognitively about their own learning. Having students discuss and realize how a certain assignment does directly apply to their lives will make it valuable to them as individuals. This is especially important as I see students becoming more and more concerned with their grade as opposed to how what we learn helps improve them as people.

Finally, authentic projects in the class allow for direct transfer of skills for graduates. Ideally, time spent in the classroom will prepare students for the expectations of the workforce and/or higher education. The more authentic the tasks within their academic experiences, the better prepared they are once outside school.

Assessment

With the pressure to meet federal and state standards, schools have become increasingly occupied with how to assess student knowledge. As Raphael states, assessment should help students grow in “self-knowledge, preparing them for the day when they will not have teachers and parents around” to help them. Throughout this teaching program I have been exposed to many forms of assessment: traditional, alternative, standardized, informal and formal. I plan to use a mix of these, but more specifically I will use rubrics and self-assessment.

During my discussions with teachers, I have found mixed opinions on rubrics. One experienced teacher felt they don’t guarantee an accurate grade, as she often doesn’t agree with the grade determined by the rubric. What this suggests to me is that her rubric should be adjusted to better reflect a proper evaluation. I also know that as a new teacher I won’t have this experience to help me with grading. Using rubrics will help me grade papers more efficiently. When given to my students, rubrics will help communicate my expectations. Finally, they give consistency and help me justify the grade if there is any discrepancy or disagreement from the student (see resource portfolio for example).

 In asking students to become more metacognitive learners, they must be able to assess their own progress. Only then can they determine what needs to be done to improve. Self-assessment can be done several ways, but I especially like the idea of having students grade themselves at the end of each class. One teacher has each student mark a 0, 1 or 2 on a chart to indicate his or her participation for that day (0 being the lowest, 2 the highest). She finds that they usually are very honest with their ratings,  helping them realize the control they have over their own grade. Another resource I will use is the website: http://www.webenglishteacher.com/ which offers a wide variety of assessment tools for English teachers.

Teaching Literacy

Writing

As with any skill we wish to improve writing take practice. As an English teacher, I must allow the students to practice, and this includes making mistakes, taking risks, and reflecting on what does and doesn’t yield results. During this course, I realized the great importance of assessing student progress at multiple stages. Expecting high quality writing in a single assignment is unrealistic, and assumes that all students have the same writing ability. As a teacher, I will require stages of writing throughout the year. This includes exercises such as pre-writes, rough drafts, revisions, giving feedback, and conferencing with each student (Atwell). This monitoring of students’ work at each stage is imperative to their success as writers. It shows them that I value the writing process and its stages, not just a final product.

            Another teaching technique I plan to use to teach writing, is modeling. As with just about everything we teach (not to mention effective writing), teachers must show instead of tell. For example, having students work with published writing gives them an example to strive for. This helps develop the critical eye they must have toward their own writing (and each others) in order to produce higher quality assignments. I believe this to be tremendously useful way to model quality writing for my students.

Reading

Developing reading skills is also a main goal for the English language arts classroom. How a teacher carries this out is often very varied. Through the readings, our class discussions, and observations made during my internship, I have developed my own informed view on how to teach reading.

            As with most skills, I hope to keep my students thinking about their own reading skills (Harvey & Goudis 2000). This is essential as they need to understand what works and what needs to change. This is especially important for those who are just beginning to read closely, such as ninth graders, ESOL, or special education students. It is my goal to not only ensure they did read, but offer them a variety of skills to choose from, so that they may build a set of possible tools to use when reading. Many of these skills include: summarizing, taking notes, discussing the book with someone or with a group, and making personal connections.  The most effective way to teach reading is to help students practice these skills directly so they can create their own reading techniques. With my cooperating teacher, I developed a handout to help our ninth grade when they read Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (see resource portfolio). This handout lists each major character and asks the students to keep notes as they learn about them in the reading. We hoped this helped them not to just keep track of the characters, but enable them to eventually analyze them once the book was finished. We modeled this process for them during the first day of the unit. The second part of the handout asks them to choose one character to focus on. They need to follow them in detail, be able to speak about their motivations, personality, and desires. In the future, I hope to use similar handouts to help engage students in reading novels. This would also be great preparation for more in depth activities such as body biographies (http://www.teachnlearn.org/body_biography.htm), papers, or scripting of scenes.

            As an English teacher I also hope to transfer an appreciation of literature to my students. I have observed English class as a place where students dissect, compartmentalize, and crank novels through a literary device formula in order to understand them. While I agree with teachers that these steps are necessary for test preparation, often times this is the only method students have to digest literature. As Rosenblatt states, we must remember the other purpose; how literature gives our students a “new experience in life, namely, the work of art.”  Test preparation is important, but we cannot lose sight of the main goal: to foster a love of literature that will hopefully continue throughout their lives.

            One of the most powerful ways to inspire a love to literature is to discuss the texts. My goal is to create a comfortable space for student to participate in discussions throughout my lessons. This semester I have learned of several discussion-sparking techniques, an imperative tool in creating not just talk but valuable talk around a piece of literature. I plan to use methods such as a Socratic seminar, fishbowl discussion and Popcorn Response (http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/weeklytips.phtml/119 ) in my classroom. These activities give students a structure by which stimulating contributions cans be made and heard by all in the classroom.

Teaching to Differentiated Learners

Each class will inevitably be diverse, if not by learning ability, language background or disability, then by race, class or gender makeup. As an experienced teacher of non-native English speakers, I am well aware of the need to serve various types of students, be they different in ethnicity or ability. One of the first classes I ever taught included seven different nationalities. The biggest variable for this class however was not race, but academic background. Some students had been attending school since they were very young. Others had been raised in very remote parts of their home country, never having stepped foot into a classroom before. There will always be the challenge of teaching to a diverse set of students, no matter the location or demographic of the school.

There are many ways I can cater to these differences as a teacher. The first step to this is recognizing where the differences lie. In addition to reading Individual Education Program profiles and consulting with special education and ESOL teachers, I like to ask each student to tell me what their needs are explicitly. As Burke suggests, teachers may obtain this information by asking students to write letters to them. With my new classes, I will be asking questions such as: What do you want to work on this year? What are you goals? What study habits do you have? What is the best way you learn (listening, reading, writing)? Is there anything else I need to know about you as a learner in this class? This helps me initially assess each student individually.

I used this technique during my two-week student teaching in the fall or 2004 with a B2 ESOL class. Not only was I able to assess their explicitly stated needs, but also their writing ability. I completed a chart for my own reference, listing each student’s strengths and weaknesses. I then used this create groups for a cooperative learning exercise. By combining students of mixed abilities, they were able to support each other through the lesson. This allowed for stronger students to serve as leaders for weaker students in need of extra attention. This also helped take the emphasis away from a single source of knowledge, the teacher, and empower the students. Seeing each other as sources of knowledge creates a more student-centered classroom.

            More specifically, there are several techniques I can use as a teacher to ensure I reach every student. Presenting information in multiple forms (written, orally, on a handout) helps reach students with various learning styles. According to Burke, teachers need to also check for understanding often. Just pausing and asking if everyone understands helps the teacher gauge where individual students are in the lesson, especially after directions are given. The most common method of differential instruction I have seen throughout my classes this semester is scaffolding. This is the process of structuring a lesson around specific steps in order to help students develop a certain skill. Scaffolding lessons means teachers start by giving the students everything they need and then slowly removing steps for them so that they are able to eventually complete the task on their own. This method is ideal for differential instruction, being especially helpful for those have difficulty working independently. 

The Role of Technology

Technology plays a critical role in the English language arts classroom as it increasingly becomes a fundamental avenue for communication in our culture. Part of my job as an English teacher is to teach students how to use technology for their benefit as working and thinking people. Tools such as search engines, on-line catalogues and databases, educational websites, and computer programs used for presentations will be integrated into my projects. If available, I plan to utilize available resources such as computer labs to model how students can enhance their projects. Modeling how to use resources is especially important tools, such as the internet, can be naturally expansive and not solely used for educational purposes.

As Hill states, there has never been so much available to our students. But it isn’t just a matter of monitoring their use of these technological tools, it is giving students the direction they need to discover the valuable information that is available.

We must also teach our students how to critically examine the information they do find on line (Gardner, Benham, and Newell). Students need to decipher the most relevant and useful information from what is irrelevant. The internet does differ from library research in that the credibility of information posted varies greatly. It is up to us as teachers to teach our students the difference between a .com and an .edu website. I plan to use the exercises both Burke and the Tangled Web authors provide for their students. Leading them to a site that appears credible but is actually erroneous is a great way to get them thinking critically.

Another useful site I plan to continue using in my teaching is Dave’s ESL café (http://www.eslcafe.com/). My ESOL students responded very well to this site. They enjoyed the interactive exercises and quizzes and I was able to immediately assess their knowledge (see resource portfolio).

            Through the readings, observations and discussions with classmates and teachers this semester, I have developed an informed teaching philosophy. With these experiences, I feel well equipped for the student teaching element of my internship this winter. I also look forward to fine-tuning my methods as I continue to gain experience as a secondary English teacher.