The skillful teacher

I.E.S Nº 9-011 ”DEL ATUEL”

ENGLISH TEACHING TRAINING COURSE

Specific Didactics II: Assignment nº 3
“Observing a Class” and
“What Students Value in Teachers”
Teacher: Natalia Toledo
Students: Traballoni, Paola Collado, Cecilia Serrano, Natalia.
Submission deadline: May, 28th, 2012. Year: 3º year
Class Assignment nº3
“Observing a Class”
Date: May 21st, 2012
Career: English Teaching Training Course. (Language I- reading workshop)
Time: 1 hour: From 19:00 to 20:00
Observation/Comments:
We observed a reading activity during Language I class. When we reached there, the activities had just began. The teacher, Laura, had organized a reading activity where she was going to read a short story, “Waiting for the police”, and students had to follow the reading. Although they should bring the story print, the teacher had some extra copies just in case. So, she began reading it in a loud and clear voice, appropriate for the level of the students, she tried to act each of the characters in order to avoid boredom and motivate their students. Students were organized in lockstep, in that way all of them could see her who was reading at the front of the class.
During the reading she made some pauses asking about doubts and encouraging her students to ask for clarification whenever they considered it necessary. All the students listen carefully, paying lot of attention. After the reading part was completed, they started sharing opinions about the story so as to start the analysis. The teacher and the students analyze it orally, the characters, their description, the setting in time and place of the story, and so on. When they started talking about symbolism, it was great because in just a minute a debate had began, most of them participated giving their opinion about which were the elements they considered symbolic. We could see or perceived that all the students felt motivated and involved in the task, and that they work all together with humour, nobody laughed or criticized their partners.
Teacher roles:
The teacher performed different kinds of roles during the class such as:
ORGANIZER: the teacher had planned exactly what information students would need. She told the students what they were going to talk and read about.
CONTROLLER: She was in complete charge of the class. All the attention was focused on the front of the lass and students were all participating.
The teacher gave a lead-in, then instructed and finally initiated the activity.
PROMPTER: she encouraged the students all the time, and helped them only when it was necessary.
PARTICIPANT: The teacher might join simulations as participant. In this case, she was the one in charge of reading and acting the story. Her participation improved the atmosphere in the class.
RESOURCE: She was aware of what was going on, ready to offer help if it was needed.
Students Roles: We could see that most of them were ACTIVE students. The more committed the students is to achieve a goal related to education the more active they are likely to be.
To be active in this learning process means that you can say whatever you like but you need to be able to substantiate what you say. You need to respect other people’s rights to speak and to have opinions that differ to your own. That does not mean that you cannot challenge them to support their ideas with evidence, but be prepared to be challenged yourself. Be open to change, but do not enforce change on others.

Read the chapter “What the Students Value in Teachers” and having in mind the class you observed add information about:
CREDIBILITY: the perception that the teacher has something important to offer and that whatever this something is (skills, knowledge, insight, wisdom, information)learning it will benefit the students considerable.
Four important and very specific indicators are commonly mentioned in this regard:
Expertise: The teacher we observed demonstrated a high level of command of the skills or knowledge she was seeking to communicate to students. They were practicing listening skill during the reading part, encouraging the students to ask for clarification whenever they considered it necessary. That, made both, the teacher and the students felt more confident when dealing with the topic. She also displayed a facility with the subject being taught that qualified her to be regarded as an expert. She showed that she knew what she was doing and talking about all the time. She also knew and controlled what the students were doing while she was performing the class. Even when in the class we observed the teacher did not have to deal with unexpected classroom events, this is another indicator of expertise. How teachers respond to such unexpected events can make the crucial difference between students perceiving them either as highly competent or as occupying their role under false pretenses.

Experience: it is an indicator that the teacher has considerable experience in the field being taught or in the activity teaching itself. Students say they appreciate it when the teacher explains that her decisions are grounded in her previous experiences teaching the subject. Referring to earlier strategies that did, or did not , work in previous courses or providing plenty of appropriate examples, metaphors, or analogies that have proved in the past to help students understand complex ideas, are also important indicators of valuable teaching experience to students. Perhaps Laura decided to prepare this kind of reading and writing workshops within the subject, since she noticed that in the previous years the students did not have enough practice of these skills and now that they are more advance in the career they have problems with it. So, she has taken this decision taking into account her own and other teacher´s experiences.

Conviction: Conviction is the sense students pick up from us that we consider it vitally important that they “get” whatever it is we are trying to teach them. It is communicated in a variety of ways, many of which are relatively low key. Conviction is recognized by students when teachers make it plain that they feel the subject matter, content, or skills being taught are so crucial that they want to explore every way they can to make sure students have learned them properly. The most common indicator of teacher conviction mentioned by students is the receipt of individual feedback or attention.
As the students were not assessed that class, we could not recognize in which way the teacher is used to giving feedback or attention to her students.

AUTHENTICITY: it is define as the perception that the teacher is being open and honest in her attempts to help students learn. Congruence: The congruence here is congruence between words and actions, between what you say you will do and what you actually do. This congruence is paramount. Nothing destroys students’ trust in teachers more quickly than seeing teachers espouse one set of principles or commitments (for example, to democracy, active participatory learning, critical thinking, or responsiveness to students’ concerns)and then behave in ways that contradict these.
According to our observation, we can say that the teacher seemed to have congruence between what she said she was going to do and what she did.

Full Disclosure: This refers to the teacher’s regularly making public the criteria, expectations, agendas, and assumptions that guide her practice. Students know and expect us to have such agendas and are usually skeptical of statements to the contrary. Unless you make your expectations, purposes, and criteria explicit you will be perceived as holding these close to your chest in a secretive way and therefore not to be trusted. .It is interesting that even if students dislike teachers’ expectations and agendas, knowing clearly what these are because the teacher consistently makes them explicit builds trust in students’ eyes. Students would much prefer to know what you stand for—even if they disagree with or dislike this—than to like you personally but be in the dark as to what it is you’re expecting. So an important part of skillful teaching is to find ways to communicate regularly your criteria, assumptions, and purposes and then to keep checking in to make sure students understand these.
As we observed Laura’s class only once, and just for an hour, it is impossible for us to know if she usually makes her expectations, purposes and criteria explicit to her students.

Responsiveness: Responsiveness is the dimension of authenticity stressed earlier by Grimmet and Neufeld (1994) that focuses on demonstrating clearly to students that you teach to help them learn in the way that is likely to be most helpful to them. Such clear student-centeredness is recognized in two ways. One is the teacher’s constant attempt to show that she wants to know how and what students are learning, what inhibitors and enhancers to learning are present in her teaching, and what concerns students have about the course. The other is her public discussion with learners of how this knowledge affects her own teaching, including the extent to which some elements of the course can be negotiated.
As we already know the teacher, we can say that she clearly teach to help them to learn in the way she thinks is the most helpful for the students.

Personhood: Personhood is the perception students have that their teachers are flesh and blood human beings with lives and identities outside the classroom. Students recognize personhood in teachers when those teachers move out from behind their formal identities and role descriptions to allow aspects of themselves to be revealed in the classroom. Instead of being thought of as relatively faceless institutional functionaries, teachers are now seen as people moved by enthusiasms or dislikes. Personhood is important because its presence seems to support students’ learning. Students seem relieved that someone who has studied this work for some time, and who has credibility in their eyes, still feels like a novice. Again, the teacher’s interest is that this autobiographical disclosure be done in the cause of sup-porting student learning and that such disclosure increases the teacher’s sense of personhood in learners’ eyes.
This kind of autobiographical disclosure is usually done by the teacher we observed in order to support and encourage students’ learning.