2014

My First Teaching Portfolio

Teacing Practice I Moises Ramirez

My First Teaching Portfolio Introduction

2014

These is my first teaching portfolio, and it includes a guide that I have planned to achieve my goals in my teaching practice, this portfolio will guide me in the teachinglearning process, it is my map and also my mirror due to it will help me to reflect in what I am doing and if what I will do in my practice is being reflected in what I have arranged here. In order to be clear about what I have arranged here in my teaching practice, I decided to answer some questions that have the purpose to be clear in who I want to become and where I want to be. The questions that will be answered are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. What is a teaching portfolio? What is my self-evaluation and reflection of my previous practice? Why do I need a teaching portfolio? How should I structure a teaching portfolio? What are my teaching responsibilities? What is my statement of teaching philosophy? What are my teaching methodology, strategies, and objectives?

This first question will be answered to have a better understanding of the definition of a teaching portfolio, in this part you will read a short definition of this term to have a clear concept of about it, so you can start inducing what the benefits, importance, and objects could be. What is a teaching portfolio? Teaching portfolios provide documented evidence of teaching from a variety of sources, not just student ratings, and provide context for that evidence. The process of selecting and organizing material for a portfolio can help one reflect on and improve ones teaching. Portfolios are a step toward a more public, professional view of teaching as a scholarly activity. Portfolios can offer a look at development over time, helping one see teaching as on ongoing process of inquiry, experimentation, and reflection. Teaching portfolios capture evidence of ones entire teaching career (Vanderbilt University , 2014). A teaching portfolio allows you to have a better organization and control of your teaching, in the way that you know what you are doing and what you want to achieve in your teaching practice. I teaching portfolio opens space to reflection and evaluation of your performing, so it enables you to make some changes to promote improvement. Now, having clear what teaching portfolio is, let us talk about one of its benefits, in this case reflection. This next question will be focused more in my own self-evaluation and reflection about my previous practice than the benefit indeed due to, in fact, this is a 2 Moises Ramirez

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benefit but it is not going to be developed in this question, however, it will be explained deeper along with the other benefits and purposes in the next question. What is my self-evaluation and reflection of my previous practice? Reflection is a benefit of a teaching portfolio because you have a recording of your performance (see question four). I already taught before and to evaluate my performing, I will take these four criteria: motivation, classroom management, teachers knowledge, and rapport. (Harmer, 2010). I will measure my performance in this way excellent, very good, good, poor and bad in order to make an objective selfassessment. Well, Classroom management, one of the points that I want to call attention, in this criteria is the ability to deal with difficult situation, a skill that I was lacking of, and probably that was why I failed, my students misbehaved a lot, and I was not able to handle this situation. There were some classrooms where I could manage the situations but, on the other hand, there were other classrooms where it looked like I was another student trying to make everyone to be quiet. My self-evaluation in classroom management is poor due to most of the time I could not handle many situations. Having assessed my classroom management, let us see how I did it in motivation and what grade I assign to my performance. Motivation, in this aspect, I was not that lost as in managing the classroom, I knew how to motivate my students (Burden, 2000), the problem was to catch their attention, but even it was kind of hard grabbing their attention, there were good moments, where I influenced them to work and to learn English, there was some students that really changed their thinking, at the very beginning of the course some of them told me teacher, I dont like English I remember how I used to told them English is one of the easiest language to learn, did you know that Spanish is much more difficult than English? and some of them realized that I was right and start ed thinking what I have told them. I also show them that learning English can be fun and interesting rather than the traditional making sentences and memorizing verbs. I influenced some of them to change their thinking, at the end of the course, the ones who told me they did not like English, actually liked English and some others started liking English and I believe that they still do because of me, influence people to be better people feels great!. In motivation I think, I did it good but not very good neither excellent, due to of the problems I faced with grabbing attention, and that not all of my students were motivated. I think I deserve a good in motivation. Now, go with rapport and my self-evaluation.

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Rapport means, according to (Jensen, 2008), is creating a connection with learners by asking them how they are doing, and other important thing is that rapport equals to responsiveness, not affection. I did not do a good job, because I was not in synchronization with all of my students, I was synced with just a few of my students but it was a considerable part, I had 30 students and 8 of those students were not in my sequence, I know it was my fault, perhaps that is why they were always misbehaving because I did not try to get along with them, neither tried to approach them to know more about them, and they could feel as if I was interested in their learning and emotions. On the other hand, with the majority of my students I created I good rapport, I used to speak with them on breaks, they shared some of their expectations and doubts about the subject with me and I used to give them advices to help them to improve. When I was doing that, I was establishing rapport and also I was being a good teacher because one of the characteristics of a good teacher is good listener. I grade myself with a good in rapport. The last criteria to assess is teachers knowledge, so let us go for it. Teachers knowledge, my level of English is not bad, I mean, I am not as good as an advance student nor a basic, in all the classes I performed, the teacher gave me the topics minutes before the class and I already knew the topic but it is useless if you have not planned, that was my problem, I always improvised. Even my knowledge of English was not bad, my knowledge of teaching had a lot to improve, I mean, if I just knew the things I know now about teaching methods, approaches, and the importance of planning, I bet I would have done a better job. The lacking of knowledge about teaching-learning was my problem, a teacher must know the subject but also must know how to teach, an English teacher must know English and teaching that is why the name English teacher. My self evaluation in this case for me is poor due to the lack of knowledge about teaching and the problems that gave me. In short, having assessed my performing, this self-evaluation obviously means that I did a bad job, you can measure it between poor and good, being poor almost bad and being good a regular performance. In other words, my performance was poorly good. Reflection First, I wanted to make an objective self-evaluation in order to know where I failed, and how I failed due to, I just did it measuring my performance taking into account those four criteria and then assigning myself an overall assessment. Now, I know what I did wrong I can reflect on it and make decisions to improve and try not to make the same mistake again. After this objective self-evaluation (I think, I have been hard with me but I deserve it) I shall reflect on it, because just imagine how hard I have been with myself, how others could be! I am aware of what I did and that what I did 4 Moises Ramirez

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was my fault, so the next step after accepting you have made a mistake is to fix it. What I am going to do is to read more about things that has to do with teaching that I ignore and planning, planning a lot because planning was my greatest deficiency in my teaching, that obviously was not teaching because a teacher plans and knows how to teach, something that I did not do. In order to improve my classroom management, I have to plan, because one thing I noticed in my teaching practice was that students know when you have planned something and they feel like why to care about what the teacher is doing if he does not even know what to do. This makes a lot of sense, because how, as a teacher, you want to control and manage your students? f you do not even know how to control, organizing nor managing what you are supposed to do in the classroom, it does not make any sense, right? that is why, I think, I must planned a lot organizing and controlling myself, before trying to control others. The core of my teaching problem is planning because if I plan I can motivate my students much better than if I do not plan, I also will have more opportunities to talk with them and establish a good communication and go hand by hand in the process of learning (rapport). If I fix the core of my problem things will be easier for me. The next question that is about to be answered, explains the benefits and some of the purposes of why teachers need to do a portfolio. As you will see the benefits are three as exposed in the question and more if you think about it. One of the purposes of this question is asking yourself do a need a teaching portfolio? and to reflect and start thinking of the importance and impact that a portfolio could make in your teaching performance. Why do I need a teaching portfolio? When I first see this question, what first comes to my mind are the benefits of a teaching portfolio and according to (Richards, 2005) they are three: evidence, reflection, and collaboration. The first benefit of a teaching portfolio is to show what you have planned and what you have arranged, for example if someone asks you why are you doing that in your class? With a teaching portfolio you are prepared to tell him, see I decided to include this in class because I already planned to use it for these reasons. Also you have a back-up to support what you are doing in your class. Moreover, you have the evidence that you have planned, and organized all you want to do in your classes and why you want to do it. The second benefit is reflection, after finishing a course you can see what you have done and reflect on it, make a self-evaluation and improve what you consider must be improved. The third one is promoting 5 Moises Ramirez

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collaboration, other teachers can see what you have done, and use what you have done and improve it, and also you can work together with a colleague in order to develop a class hand by hand. The goal for a teaching portfolio is twofold. At its core, compiling a teaching portfolio is essentially a reflective activity. The very process of writing down your teaching philosophy and corroborating it with the appropriate evidence automatically causes you to reflect on your teaching. It can help clarify your goals, underscore your development as an educator, and highlight areas for further growth (Carnegie Mellon, 2014). Setting goals and open space to assess what you are going to do are two of the purpose of a teaching portfolio, when you do a portfolio you decide what you want to achieve, you set an objective that at the end of the course will be reflected in your performance and with teaching portfolio you will have a back-up and evidence in what you can reflect if you are achieving that objective. You assess yourself, your performance and if you are achieving what you already set and this helps you to correct and improve to achieve your goals. Going back to the main question why do I need a teaching portfolio? an accurate answer is you need it because of its benefits. In this question I will explain how I will structure my teaching portfolio, the sequence that it has to follow to be organized. A teacher must be organized and this will show you the outline of a teaching portfolio. How should I structure a teaching portfolio? According to (Constantino & De Lorenzo, 2002) a teaching portfolio must be structured taking into account four elements. The first one is the introduction, in this part you give an overview of your portfolio given the main reasons why you decided to include the elements that are in your portfolio. Also, it is important that in every section, you give a short introduction of that element and why you chose it, if you notice before every question I have explained in my portfolio, there is a little introduction giving a preview of what the question will answer and the purpose of including that question in my teaching portfolio. At the very beginning, of my portfolio, I made an overview of what it is supposed to be developed in this portfolio and why, it is the main introduction. You should include introductions because it gives readers, a preview of what they are going to read and the reasons of including that part in your portfolio, the reasons must be an overview and then, in the point, you must go deeper in that point. The second element, that you must take into account in your teaching portfolio is the artifacts, these artifacts can include teaching philosophy, course syllabi, summaries of students' evaluations, lesson plans, students' work, others (Kinnard, 2006). In this 6 Moises Ramirez

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part, basically what you have to do is to compile all the sources and artifacts that you are going to use in your portfolio, and in the third element that is explanation, what you have to do is to explain each artifact, describe them, and explaining why you decided to include that source in your teaching portfolio, in this teaching portfolio I have explained the reasons why I decide to include each element (question) but it is still lacking many artifacts because this portfolio will be done in long term, and the artifacts have not been chosen yet, just one of them that is my teaching philosophy, that as you see I explain that my teaching philosophy will define my teaching style, that is the explanation, and the purpose of including it is there, too, and it is to be clear of who I am, etc that is the explanation of why I am using this artifact (teaching philosophy). The fourth element that must be included in the structure of my teaching portfolio is the reflection and this reflection is about the meaning that the different artifacts have for you, in other words, why you think those artifacts are important to your teaching portfolio, in my teaching philosophy, I include this reflection why this philosophy is important for my teaching portfolio and it is the only reflection of my artifacts because is my only source so far and at the end you should reflect in your portfolio, and what your whole portfolio, means for you, this is the fifth element and it is called the conclusion. In this part you must reflect on the meaning of your own teaching portfolio and the importance that has for you as a teacher. In this question I will answer what are my teaching responsibilities as an English teacher, I will explain why these responsibilities are so important, and that every teacher must be aware about them in order to be careful of what he or she is doing and also to know where you are and what you are doing as a teacher. What are my teaching responsibilities? Teachers have many responsibilities, I do not know but in my very own opinion, teaching is the most dangerous work in the world because if you make a mistake with your students they could become useless for society, even they could become thieves or murderers, it sounds dramatic, but I remember once I was watching a TV show about schools and there was a teacher and he was talking about that he wanted to help society by been a police man in order to catch the bad guys but then he chose education, and the students asked him why, he said I decided to be teacher because I want to correct boys before they become bad people this was so deep and true. Our major responsibility as teachers are our students, we are forming people, and those people will be the people of tomorrow that can be useful or useless for humanity depending on how we influence

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them. Therefore, we need to be really careful and take our job as the most dangerous in the world because humanity is on the line. Another of my responsibilities as a teacher is to plan, I have said it a lot in this teaching portfolio but let us take a look at what can be found in (Scrivener, 2011) about the importance of planning. Planning is a vital component of the teaching-learning process. Proper classroom planning will keep teachers organized and on track while teaching, thus allowing them to teach more, helping students reach objectives more easily and manage less. The better prepared the teacher is, the more likely she or he will be able to handle whatever unexpectedly happens in the lesson. Planning provides a coherent framework for smooth efficient teaching. Also it helps the teacher to be more organized. Moreover, it gives a sense of direction in relation to the syllabus. In addition, it helps the teacher to be more confident when delivering the lesson. Planning provides a useful basis for future planning. Thus, it helps the teacher to plan lessons which cater for different students. And at the end, planning is a proof that the teacher has taken a considerable amount of effort in his or her teaching. In this next question I will establish my teaching philosophy, I will explain my principles, values and what I believe is right to do. In short, all this aspects will define how my teaching style will be and how this teaching style will affect my performance and success while doing my teaching practice. What is my statement of teaching philosophy? My teaching philosophy is education is the key to human development, I mean the more education, values and good principle you have the better person you will be to our society, the most profitable person you will become to help and improve our society. I want to create in my students, this principle, to believe that education is the key to overcome ignorance, due to education is good and ignorance is evil. All those things like murders, robberies, violations and kidnappings happen because of education lacking, lacking of values and principle that a teacher or parents could have formed in children. Because thieves and murderers were taught that money is first, they do all those evil things because of money and perverseness but what about if someone would have taught that life is first over all those material things and to protect others rather than yourself, also good values and principles, they would be better people. For me ignorance is a disease, a mortal one, because is killing us, the more ignorant are there the more murders, violations and kidnappings are there. And this disease do not only affects humans but animals, plants and our planet because we are destroying our planet because of our ignorance, we should start thinking in our future, 8 Moises Ramirez

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in how what we do now will affect our future generation, in short we must care about others and stop being selfish. For me, as I said, ignorance is a disease and education is the cure, schools are the hospitals, teachers are the doctors, and knowledge is the vaccine this is other of my principles. The reality is that I am going to be an English teacher but even as an English teacher I hope to make my students realize what I have realized. I want to make the difference, I know I cannot change the world, it is difficult but not impossible, but even I cannot change the world a can change the future of some people, my students, and they can change the minds of their children and the children of their children. This could be my legacy, but in order to do it I must teach my principles and change people thinking to become better and profitable people, I believe this principles I believe in are good because I want to benefit others not myself. These two principles I have mentioned, are my philosophy, but other part of my philosophy are my values respect, responsibility, honesty, perseverance, solidarity, and tolerance. These are my values when I teach I respect my students because I want them to respect me, I want to be responsible of what I do, planning and fulfilling students needs. Also I want to be honest with them in everything I do and everything I say because I want that they trust me and I also want to trust them, being able to talk about everything without misunderstandings. I am a person who says never give up, in this case is not an option because I want to achieve my objectives. I want to help my students, in everything they need, because I really like helping people who need help because one day you can be the one who needs help I also want that they help each other and make collaboration rather than competition in the class. And at the end, I want to be patient with all the misbehavior that I will face, but now I feel prepared to face with these issues. This next question will answer how I am going to teach, and what I am going to do in order to achieve my objectives. My methodology and my strategies are my bricks and concrete to build the house of successful teaching. They are the map that guides to though the path of ignorance to create meaningful learning. What are my teaching methodology, strategies, and objectives? Before explaining my methodology, I want to be clear about the sequence of approach, methodology, methods, techniques, and strategy. Approach is the overall in which you have to based your methodology, the methodology must be based on the approach this means that the methods must fulfill the requirements of the approach then the techniques must fulfill the requirements of the methods that are based on the approach and at the end there comes the strategies that is the way you use the techniques that are based on the methods that are based on the approach. If you follow 9 Moises Ramirez

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this sequence you will have another one that is successful teaching. This next diagram sums up what I have said.

Approach Successful Teaching

Methodology

Methods Techniques Strategies

My methodology will have methods that fulfill the requirements of the approach under which I will be teaching. And the approach that I will be teaching is communicative. (MINED, 2008) says that the communicative approach emphasizes comprehension and negotiation of meaning more than production of structures. Students can learn to communicate through interacting, and that the appropriate morpho-syntactical structures are developed once the interaction begins. This approach also favors the instructional value of communication. Interaction is the same as communication. Now I have identify the approach I can create my methodology, and a methodology is a cluster or mix of methods carefully selected to fulfill an approach. The methods that will use are those that are focused in communication, use the language instead of just study. For example, football players learn to play football by playing football not studying the rules. That is what I want to do in practice, use the language to learn it. Methodology, methods, techniques and strategies The methods that I have chosen to use in my methodology are five: direct method, audio-lingual method, desuggestupedia, and the grammar translation method total physical respond these methods are illustrated explained by (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). And these methods do not come alone, there are techniques that support them. The technique is what helps the method because a method is the path and the 10 Moises Ramirez

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techniques are the steps to reach the end of that path, and the strategy the way how you can develop a technique, you can develop the same technique but the strategy you use to develop it will vary, for example, in the direct method I will use this technique called Reading Aloud (Gibson, 2005) suggests that teachers often say that reading aloud can help to practice and improve pronunciation. Specialist books on pronunciation tend to concentrate on segmental and the accurate production of specic sounds, and so only isolated words or, at most, single sentences are read aloud or spoken. This is a technique that makes students or the teacher read aloud, but a teacher can do this by read segments, one by one, past a student in front of the class, or everybody reads at once the technique is reading aloud and the strategy is how you are going to develop the technique. There are several ways to perform a technique and as teacher we must do the one that makes feel students comfortable. Now, you can identify the difference between this two terms let us talk about the techniques that I am going to use, based on the methods, that are based in the methodology that at the same time is based on the approach. The grammar translation method and its supporting technique fill in the blanks in this technique the students have to fill in the missing spaces with the correct word based on what they have seen. This can be done with many strategies, for example, it could be a reading passage like a short story or a short article and then fill in the blanks. Other strategy, to develop this technique, is for instance, instead of using a paragraph use a song and gives students the lyrics with missing spaces. This strategy is better because it is cheerful and more attractive than read an article that can bore students. Other technique that is appropriate in this method, that I will use, is use word in a sentence, this technique consist in using the new words in a sentence to develop the lexicon and the use of the new vocabulary. I will do it in two ways and these are the strategies that I am thinking, the first one is to give the new vocabulary and show its meaning by association, miming or pictures and relating this vocabulary with context in the whiteboard by myself, and the second strategy is to ask students to go in front and ask them to write sentences using the new words. There are more techniques that can be use like reading comprehension questions, deductive application of rules, memorization, composition and others (Egos, 2014). Some of the techniques involved in the audio-lingual method that I will use my teaching practice are repetition drill and use of minimal pairs. The first one consists in repeating after the teacher, but I will use two strategies I will ask my students repeat after me, and also I will tell students repeat after some student but the best way is individually when listen to each students pronunciation. Use of minimal pair, are words that just differ in one consonant, example bad and bat. I will ask my students to figure out which word I am saying, this is one strategy to apply this technique and other one is to tell the distinction to my students when they look at the shape of my mouth when I say a word and after cover my mouth so they will only use their listening skill. This are some other techniques that I will use in my TP transformation drill, question 11 Moises Ramirez

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and answer drill, complete the dialog, grammar game, others (LinkedIn Corporation, 2014) The techniques that I will use when using the Desuggestupedia are choosing a new identity and role play. The first one consists in choosing among occupations for example doctor, lawyer, etc and you will describe what you do. My first strategy to develop this technique is to ask students to past in front ask to describe their occupation and the other one, it is the make a sort of short play where they play the occupation they choose this is in groups and they decide what to do but always according to what they decided to be. The role play consists in acting as another person for example, your mom, dad, friend, classmate or even the teacher and you will speak as if you were him or her. This technique is so much fun, because when someone pretends to be someone else they always overreact and that is funny. There are two forms that I think I can develop this technique, I could make couples and tell them to pretend to be your couple or, on the other hand, I could say okay students pretend to be someone that you want to be, it can be mom, dad, a friend, etc. Other techniques that are used with this method are classroom set-up, positive suggestion, primary activation, others. At the end in the total physical respond, I am going to use these techniques, using commands to direct behavior and action sequence. The first one is easy and simple, you just give commands to the students and they will do what you asked, for instance, you say Peter, open the door. I will use this technique and develop it in two ways, the first one with direct commands to one students and so on, they are supposed to do what I request, but if they fail, they are not able to participate again, this will be by turns, and the other strategy that I like the most to develop this technique, it is a well-known game that everyone knows, I am talking about the game of Simon says, I will be Simon, and the students will obey what I say, paying attention if I say Simon says and the ones who fail, get out of the game. Also I can delegate a student to be Simon and just can watch and be the judge of the game. This my methodology, based on the communicative approach, the methods and techniques I decided to used to promote practice of the English language. Now, I have described my methodology, it is clear what one of my objectives is, obviously to use the language but let us list my teaching objectives for my teaching practice.

Objectives These are the objectives that I have set, and that I want to achieve in my teaching practice: To use the language rather than study it. To create in my students a meaningful learning. To break the traditional teaching of the English language. 12 Moises Ramirez

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To be a good teacher. To influence my students to be better people. To promote my teaching philosophy Ignorance is a disease and the only cure is education To achieve all the aims I have set as a personal challenge. Conclusion Concluding this portfolio is my map and my mirror, where it is a written recording and planning of what I want to do and achieve in my teaching practice. I will reflect on it in every class I teach, because here are many important and meaningful things for me that will help me to remember what I will do. When I feel lost in my teaching practice I can just take a look at this portfolio and be sure of where I want to go (I do not hope so). This portfolio reflects who I want to be as a teacher and where do I want to go.

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My First Teaching Portfolio References

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Burden, P. R. (2000). Powerful Classroom Management Strategies: Motivating Students to Learn. En P. R. Burden, Powerful Classroom Management Strategies: Motivating Students to Learn (p. 13). Corwin Press. Carnegie Mellon. (March 2, 2014). CMU. Recovered March 2, 2014, from CMU: https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/resources/DocumentingYourTeaching/TeachingPort folios/TeachingPortfolios.pdf Constantino, P. M., & De Lorenzo, M. N. (2002). Developing a Professional Teaching Portfolio: A Guide for Success. En P. M. Constantino, & M. N. De Lorenzo, Developing a Professional Teaching Portfolio: A Guide for Success (p. 12). Allyn & Bacon, Incorporated. Egos, M. C. (March 2, 2014). SlideShare. Recovered March 2, 2014, from SlideShare: slideshare.com Gibson, S. (2005). Reading aloud: a useful learning tool? En S. Gibson, Reading aloud: a useful learning tool? (p. 31). Oxford University Press. Harmer, J. (2010). How to To Teach English. En J. Harmer, How to To Teach English (pgs. 20, 25, 30, 34). Pearson Longman. Jensen, E. (2008). Super Teaching: Over 1000 Practical Strategies. En E. Jensen, Super Teaching: Over 1000 Practical Strategies (p. 132). Corwin Press. Kinnard, J. (2006). From Crayons to Cyberspace: Creating A Professional Teaching Portfolio. En J. Kinnard, Kinnard, Jo (p. 18). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. En D. Larsen-Freeman, Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (p. 11, 23, 35, 73, 107). UK: Oxford University Press. LinkedIn Corporation. (March 2, 2014). SlideShare. Recovered March 2, 2014, from SlideShare: slideshare.com MINED. (2008). MINED El Salvador. March 2, 2014, from MINED El Salvador: http://www.mined.gob.sv/ Richards, J. C. (2005). Professional Development for Language Teachers: Strategies for Teacher Learning. En J. C. Richards, Professional Development for Language Teachers: Strategies for Teacher Learning (p. 98-99). Cambridge University Press. 14 Moises Ramirez

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Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching. En J. Scrivener, Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching (p. 17). Macmillan Education Australia. Vanderbilt University . (March 2, 2014). Center for Teaching. Recovered March 2, 2014, from Center for Teaching: http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teachingportfolios/

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