I am posting my mini project #2 directly on here because I forgot how to make a link for it. It is not that long or great (most likely) because my experience as a 'teacher' has been limited and for only 2 semesters. However, I hope that with the experience I gain teaching at UF and later on will help me polish my future teaching philosophy.
Lucia M. Montas
03/31/2008
TIFLE
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
Mark van Doren
This quote best describes what I believe is teaching, which to me is the art of assisting discovery. With teaching, I feel that I am a facilitator of knowledge; my goal is to allow students to discover new ideas, make connections, open themselves to accept and see a new culture, embrace differences and change their world.
Even though I am relatively new to teaching, I have realized my mistakes, what works and doesn’t work, and how to be more confident in my abilities as a teacher. Having the opportunity to teach Spanish at the college level has reaffirmed my decision to become a teacher, and even though I am young, I continue to learn what makes someone a good teacher. I can say with confidence that in this short amount of time, I have been able to assist students in the discovery of the Spanish language and culture.
Since taking AP Spanish literature in high school, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. This was a significant time in my life (living in Nicaragua) and I knew in my experience that Ms. Ruiz inspired me to consider a career in teaching.
When I came to college, I immediately declared a major in Spanish and pursued a degree in education. While taking education classes I decided that I did not want to limit myself to the K-12 level but wanted to become a professor. By becoming a college professor, I feel that I will have the power and the ability to teach what I want to teach (which is literature) and have more flexibility than the typical high school teacher.
I describe myself as a teacher who is fair and at the same time someone who cares about the students and their learning process. I want my students to be able to feel comfortable enough to express and communicate in another language, to be engaged and opened to new culture, to break stereotypes of Hispanic culture within the US etc. I believe that students should be active participants of their own learning and not make the teacher fully responsible in the classroom. Students should be able to show autonomy and the teacher should be able to demonstrate authority and knowledge in the classroom.
During these two semesters of teaching, I have maintained an open and carefree environment with my students, I want them to feel at ease with language, ask each other questions, and not be afraid to make mistakes. My classes are filled with facilitated group work, diverse activities, videos, and culture. I try to make my classes different each day so that the students are encouraged to go beyond what is expected of them. This can easily be passed to the teaching of literature, which is eventually what I would like to teach.
In Liberal Arts, literature is seen as something very unattainable; culturally speaking it is for the elite. As a professor of literature, my goal is to make literature accessible to students, help them make discoveries and break barriers that separate them. Reading literature in another language has become the main focus of language teaching today, because language is not just grammar concepts and rules; words have the power to add meaning and transform people. As the world changes rapidly, and technology becomes the focus of our lives, it is important to remind students of the simpler things in life. Reading is becoming a foreign concept to many students, and books themselves are becoming digital or available online.
Therefore, the use of technology in the classroom will be efficient for teaching literature. Currently in my classroom I use technology to explain grammar concepts, introduce different activities. I show video to introduce culture and dialogue. Technology can be beneficial for the foreign language classroom whether it be a focus on language itself or literature. Currently, I have had the opportunity to develop lesson plans using technology in the literature classroom. It is often difficult to introduce technology but beneficial for the students. One of the topics within technology that interests me is ICC or Intercultural Communication. This concept is important when teaching culture, it incorporates different CMC or computer mediated communication. It can include email, chat, video, and podcasts. In the future, I would like to incorporate this concept into my teaching because it enables students to make connections and improve their writing and oral skills. I can see myself using this in a intermediate level Spanish class and perhaps in a literature class exchange ideas about a certain time period, author, or novel. For example, a video chat can generate discussion of a specific book that is being studied in class. Students can exchange ideas not only with their classmates but with students in another country studying the same thing.
Finally, being a teacher is significant to the passing of information and knowledge. Teachers have the ability of opening people’s minds and helping them create and make new discoveries, and using technology will only help teachers accomplish this task.
