Teaching Philosophy:
The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.
Abraham Van Helsing: Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
Consider that I laboured not for myself only, but for all them that seek learning.
- Ecclesiasticus, XXXIII. 17.
My personal teaching philosophy is to embrace mistakes and failures. Every attempt is closer to proficiency. It often frustrates me that my students clam up when they have an excellent opportunity to practice their English. When pushed, the students will surprise me and themselves in regards to the quality of their pronunciation. Just today, I told a student to speak when none of his classmates would. He spoke quite well and the tense mood in the room shattered as many of the students wished to be next. It is a favorite tactic of mine to use because students need to learn and are often resistant to learning. The benefits, though, when the students listen are enormous because they can never truly lose that information. I constantly drill into my students the idea that some pieces of information will be very important for the future such as, 'the difference between British and American English.'
My Expectations:
To be honest, my expectations were initially of an educational system more akin to the American system that I grew up in. In many ways, I have been pleasantly surprised at the level of individual innovation and initiative of my co-workers. Lesson plans are often adapted to meet the needs of the student while, in the US, it is the other way around.
I also expected to be more of a tourist here in Spain. Yet, I always volunteer for extra work opportunities such as the Global Classrooms program. Going into the GC program, I thought that it would be the same program of model United Nations that I did in 6th grade. Turns out that I was a bit off the mark. GC is a model UN program, yet it has an additional focus on English learning. I did help the students develop their public speaking and negotiating skills, yet much of the focus was placed on proper English grammar.
The day of the Global Classrooms Conference (January 25th, 2019), I had expected with a lot of stress. I knew my students were prepared, yet I expected some calamity to befall us such as a sudden thunderstorm. Luckily, my expectations were proven wrong and my students did even better than I hoped. Even though, they did not advance into the next stage; they still made improvements to their English, public speaking and negotiating skills by leaps and bounds.
Highlights:
Tourism:
- Skiing inside of Parque Xanadu in the middle of October. It was amazing!
- Visiting Valencia for the Constitutional bridge.
- Travelling to Pamplona and discovering the Old City.
- Entering Museo del Prado four times for free because I was under 26!
- A good metro system.
- Attending La Liga Games for Real Madrid-Athletico Madrid, Athletico Madrid - Barcelona, and Valencia - Sevilla.
Teaching:
- Putting my university training in communication into practice.
- Creating a positive student-teacher dialogue in order to better help everyone learn and grow.
- Introducing new concepts and ideas to the class, in order to fulfill the inherent curiousity of young minds.
- Becoming more mindful of the fact that people are sometimes shy about expressing themselves in a foreign language. This has allowed me to become more emotionally warm in order to help break the ice and allow the student to express themselves.
Global Classrooms:
- Having a large amount of responsibility for someone as young as me was a huge highlight of my experience here in Spain. I was given all the support that I needed and was given a relatively free hand to guide the direction of the program.
- The students really became intrigued at the program and as a result, had some noticeable improvements in their English.
- Getting to know the ten students that made up the GC team was great! This really helped improve the dialogue in the classroom even after Global Classrooms had concluded.
- I just love to work with anything has to do with social sciences or politics. So, this was a match made in heaven for a political scientist.
Goals for Self and Students:
The goal that I laid out for myself was to improve my Spanish out of the classroom. Primarily, this was done in order to fully take advantage of the momentous opportunity of being in Spain. I can say that my Spanish has improved dramatically from where it once was. It is my final goal to speak perfectly fluent Spanish at the end of this academic year and it seems that I am on track to achieve that goal, albeit making a couple grammar mistakes along the way. The goals that I lay out for my students include not only English proficiency, but achievement in other areas such as public speaking as well. I can say that this goal was successfully met with my Global Classroom students. Thus, I look forward towards helping another group of students as they compete in the upcoming Spelling Bee. It is my desire to help them deal with stage fright and express themselves clearly to their audience.
Contributions:
- I often speak in regards an agenda point during our twice a month bilingual conference with all the bilingual teachers.
- Created a series of PowerPoint presentations on a number of topics ranging from: Obesity to Orienteering. These presentations can be recycled and used by next year's LAs.
- Helped organize the school's global classrooms team as well as coaching it from the beginning till conference day.
- Participated in directing students, through Michael Bloomberg's Global Scholars program, in order to know more about the use of water and the effects of pollution on their local water cycle.
Global Classrooms Sample:
Global Classrooms is in many ways quite similar to other model UN programs. Though key differences arise when one becomes aware of the fact that no other language than English can be spoken in the conference room. Another departure from the mainstay program is the option for students to advance all the way to compete in New York City in the actual United Nations.
The basic stages of a GC conference are as follows:
- Opening Speeches
- Moderated Caucus (Speeches and formal debate) with a specific speaking time.
- Unmoderated Caucus (Unorganized timed debate) generally used for resolution writing and politicking.
After a 45 minute lunch break, the top two resolutions or proposals are chosen and drafted.
Then the two resolutions are debated upon and voted. Both resolutions or proposed solutions can either pass or fail. It does not matter if both pass or neither does. All that matters is the spirited and respectful debate. Below a brief gallery of images and videos of the GC program.
https://youtu.be/nDenA6jJGek: Solomiya and Silvia Interview (Post-GC Conference)
https://youtu.be/9WPbPjLn4f8: Javier and Deiana Interview (Post-GC 2)
Mock Conference (December 14th, 2018) IES Velazquez, Mostoles
(January 24th, 2019) - Global Classrooms
