TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

     A couple of years ago, while I was still an instructor teaching English as a foreign language in a university environment, I video recorded and viewed my teaching for reflective teaching purposes. With the help of a mentor teacher, I worked on improving different aspects of my teaching, one of which was improving student autonomy. She encouraged me to make conscious decisions that would decrease student reliance on teachers in the classroom. One day, right after I instructed my students to work in groups to complete a task, her words came to me. Instead of approaching students right away, I immediately decided to leave them alone for some time, which led learners to rely more on each other, pushed them to interact with each other in English to make sense of the task, and made sure they owned the results.  It was a conscious effort as it was the first time I was fully aware of my practice.                                        Upon reflection after the class, I realized thoughtful planning, implementation and reflecting can lead to positive outcomes. Most importantly, this experience taught me that teaching is a constant stream of professional decisions made before, during, and after classroom interaction.                                                                                    Before I go into a classroom and teach, I have a routine of creating lesson plans that include detailed scripting. Writing reminds me of the goals and objectives of each class, gives me a space to think about the applicability of what I’m planning to do in the class, and keeps the lesson connected and organized. For instance, I usually script question and answer sequences between the teacher and students. Writing responses to the intended questions from learners’ perspectives sometimes proves my questions complex; thus, I simplify them, probably avoiding awkward silences in the classroom. Moreover, scripting with the help of images is helpful to give clear instruction and inductively teach abstract and complicated concepts such as grammar, which also ends up cutting excessive teacher-talk. And lastly, preparing detailed lesson plans reminds me to recycle prior student work. I give further positive feedback by putting student words, sentences, examples, and texts into my lesson plan.                                         During class hours, one of my most significant responsibilities is to conduct activities that focus on form, meaning, and use. For this, I bring authentic input in which students become aware of selected grammatical forms, discover related vocabulary, and notice how other speakers use language skills and strategies. For instance, I have students work with transcripts and fill in the blanks of the relevant aspects of language while listening to spoken texts. Next, I create opportunities to use the selected language features, skills, and strategies in real-life situations in the class. One of the techniques I usually prefer is role-play activities, which is good for students to practice using the input given implicitly. For example, suppose the language focus has been communication repair strategies, and the students have filled in the blanks with the repair strategies that they have heard. In that case, the learners can be given dialogues where they have communication breakdowns and asked to role-play the situations and repair the breakdowns. After that, I make sure students engage in discussions that focus on form, discourse, skills, and strategies. Devoting more quality time to help the learners form their own hypotheses may lead to deeper and better learning. Finally, I ask my students to repeat a slightly altered version of the role-play activity using the language resources that they have discussed to promote fluency, accuracy, and complexity development.                                                                  At the end of a session, I ask students simple questions or include an exit ticket with follow-up questions to assess their progress and collect learners’ feedback to adjust my teaching. After that, I immediately go over my lesson plan and make further adjustments to the parts that need changing. To know what needs changing, I need to be fully active and give all my attention to what’s going on in the classroom.                              The decision-making process is a constant feedback loop between a lesson plan and real classroom interaction. Thus, teaching is not linear since it depends on the learners and the situations. As a teacher, I know I should reshape my teaching methods, materials, and activities in line with students’ needs and the changing world around us.