Instruction

"The ability to demonstrate effective instructional strategies for one-on-one tutoring, classroom teaching, and learner assessment"

During my time in the Certificate Program, I started by writing about what led me to pursue teaching and reflecting on what influences my teaching pedagogy. I continuously related my teaching experiences to  theoretical perspectives I was reading about, reflected on experiences learning a second language, and thought critically about various instructional strategies. Each week I analyzed commercial textbooks and spent a semester tutoring a student one-on-one. By the end of my first semester, I had written a learner profile and reflection of my time spent tutoring, observed a language teacher with 10 years teaching experience, designed four complete lesson plans, implemented and video-taped one lesson,as a final task, wrote an analysis and reflection of the video-taped session.

Excerpts from Reflective Tasks:

--“Now that I am in my third year of teaching English language learners, I have combined everything I have experienced. I have forgotten a lot of my experiences until a similar situation arises. I look at old notebooks and portfolios from my time in college at the beginning of each semester. I lead each class by the expectations I have of my students. All activities, rules, assignments, and fun are centered on what I expect of my students. This includes academic and social expectations.”

--“If a student comes into a class being largely incomprehensible and leaves the class functionally comprehensible, that is more important to me than the student who made little errors at the start of the class and little errors at the end of the class. Assessment should show progression.”

--“What I can take from the lesson is the idea of balance: balancing the time spent on each area of the writing process, from brainstorming to the final draft, balancing the amount of corrective feedback given on content vs. grammar, and balancing the amount of time peer-editing, self-editing, and teacher-editing.”

--“Visual Depiction of Teachers, VoiceThread Assignment: The kind of teacher I aspire to be- help & nurturing, respected & respectful, culturally sensitive & open-minded, and student centered & encouraging.”

Samples of Coursework Demonstrating Mastery of the Goal:

1. Learner Profile & Reflection
2. Classroom & Teacher Observation
3. Lesson Plan 1
4. Lesson Plan 2
5. Lesson Plan 3
6. Lesson Plan 4
7. Final Instructional Strategies Reflection

Link to Teaching Video with Comments