Conceptualizing teaching acts

     1. What do you usually do as a teacher? With what kind of rationale?

I usually help my students to gain knowledge of different things. I encourage them to learn from the context and in the context.  My role as a teacher is to explore the world of hand with my students. Hence, I usually contextualize the topic, mimic some things, sing and play with them. I like my students think my classes are striking and interesting. I do all of this because I want them to be able to learn English in a creative way not in the traditional one. Besides, I want them to fall in love with what they do. I also want them to be the main characters of this learning process.

2. What is your mind engagement like in the professional exercise of teaching?

A teacher who is not motivated to learn every day is an obsolete person. In this sense, I try to participate in different events, take courses and also do my MA, because I think this is a good way to do not feel selfless. In the first place, I think I need to know many things because the world changes every single day and I need to be aware of these changes. It seems to me absolutely interesting that teachers can move on and teach their students using different strategies. In addition, teachers do not know everything but we have to be prepared in case of questions that could be arisen in the classroom. All in all, I believe that engage our minds in this teaching practice give us tools, strategies, new methodologies to explore and give our students the best education as possible.

3. How would you characterize your professional, personal and experiential knowledge of teaching?

I firmly believe that we as teachers learn from experiences. I have noticed that at college I received many strategies and tools to teach but when I graduated it was somehow different. At the beginning was difficult because students varied according to their age, their contexts, their personal situations and so on. Therefore, I had to implement new strategies, because I was really good at theory but I realized that theory was not enough to teach in a classroom. Then, I learned to deal with many situations at the same time. I am completely sure, I need to learn more things about it but I am going to learn them through experience.

4. How do you see the relationship between theory, research and practice?

In my opinion, theory, research and practice play important roles in education. To begin with, it appears that theory is written proposals that are made by professionals. According to Kumaravadivelu (2003, p.18) “theory is generally seen to constitute a set of insights and concepts derived from academic disciplines…” Secondly, research appears to give support to those theories. As a result, theorists can base their studies on foundations and principles. Thirdly, kumaravadivelu’s (2003, p. 18) argues that “practice is seen to constitute a set of teaching and learning strategies indicated by the theorist…” In this sense, it seems that theorist manage the practice.

Indeed, based on Alexander (1986) ideas, teachers need to take into consideration their own practice with these types of knowledge (theory, research and practice) and focus more on what they should think (Cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 20).

It is my belief that all of these aspects are significant because are immersed in our teaching practice. It is not a secret that we need theory, clear statements written especially by the people who live those experiences. The problem here is that we can have excellent ideas but we do not write them down on a sheet of paper nor publish them.

5. To what extent is there a cause-effect relationship between teaching and learning?

In my way of thinking, someone can learn without receiving that formal instruction called “teaching”. Nonetheless, it depends on the purpose someone can have in learning. That is to say, if I want to learn Math but I think I am not good at it and I see I cannot learn by myself. I am pretty sure I am going to need someone specialized in the topic. So, if I receive that instruction maybe the results are going to be better. On the whole this cause-effect depends on someone's purposes or goals.

References:

Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. Yale University Press.