Philosophy of Teaching
The ACTFL Standards for teaching foreign language are called “The 5 Cs”, which stand for Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities. When making notes about the basic tenets I believe to be key components of my classroom I realized that each tenet also begins with “C”. Community, Comfort and Challenge are the three key ideas that I strive to incorporate into my classroom. Through the implementation of my Three Cs, I will strive to create a classroom where students feel welcome and supported while still being challenged to work to their highest potential.
I strongly believe that a sense of community is vital to a harmonious classroom environment. I can do little to control what goes on outside my classroom but students should feel respected and show respect for others when they are in my class. I emphasize the necessity of a respectful classroom environment from day one. I strive to make clear that name-calling, derogatory comments and put downs do not have a place in my class. My students will understand that this type of behavior is not a part of a respectful classroom and can be extremely damaging to students’ comfort level and learning in the classroom. Respect for different people and their different ideas is crucial for community-building.
Ensuring that students have a voice in the classroom community is imperative as well. LaGuardia and Ryan (2002) stress that students need the autonomy to self-regulate and express their competence. As I have written many times over the last two quarters, in both the Student Learning Project and the Relational Pedagogy, I feel that students’ interests need to be further incorporated into World Language curriculum. I will to take into account students’ suggestions for games and activities that fit into the unit being studied. Students are more engaged in activities that mean something to them. Making information relevant to students’ own lives is one of the keys to keeping them interested. The best way to find out what interests students is to ask them. I work on building a personal relationship with each student through out the school year. It doesn’t happen overnight, but the information that I learn about each student can eventually be incorporated into the class. It seems so simple, but listening to students is a key component to community in the classroom and one that is too often overlooked.
Along with Community and the concept of respect for all comes Comfort. Communicative Language Teaching, the primary method studied in our World Languages methods classes, places emphasis on communicative abilities rather than grammar. Making mistakes is quite alright, as long as you are attempting to communicate. Error correction is minimal and usually focused on just one grammar or vocabulary point, rather than an overwhelming array of errors that equal too much input at once. By concentrating on communication and teaching grammar implicitly, there is more time available for enjoyable activities that require students to actually use the target language rather than just talking about it. Because the target language is being used the majority of the time, students become more comfortable with it. This lowers anxiety in the classroom. I aim to minimize this anxiety in my own classroom by introducing the target language from the beginning. I realize that some students will never feel comfortable speaking in front of the class and I will devise opportunities for those students to use the target language in a less stressful environment, such as one on one conversations or taped dialogues they can do at home.
I attempt to create a comfortable classroom atmosphere where students can concentrate on working hard and not worry about what is going on outside of the classroom. It is possible to create a new environment in a World Language classroom, one that feels markedly different from the rest of the school. I hope to make my classroom feel as though it exists in the Spanish-speaking world, rather than in a traditional school setting. Some researchers say that by taking on a Spanish name and speaking completely in the target language, students are able to step out of their real life for fifty minutes a day and become someone else.
Stefanou says, “Autonomy-supportive teachers described specific attempts to support intrinsic motivation, such as creating a student-centered atmosphere, encouraging student initiative, nurturing competence, and using non-controlling communication, as well as attempts to promote internalization by providing rationales and promoting the valuing of the task” (Stefanou, 2004, p. 99). I believe that another way to create a comfortable classroom is by giving students a place in school that feels centered on them and their goals. Hopefully, when given the opportunity to explore topics that motivate them, students will be gradually more interested in exploring a subject more deeply. By providing rationales and being explicit about the value of what we are covering in class, students will feel as though the class has something to offer, rather than wondering how this material will help them in the real world.
Many students shy away from taking a World Language once they have fulfilled the requirements necessary for admission into a four-year university. The grammar that is studied in the third, fourth and fifth years of Spanish seems intimidating and students often do not earn the As they are accustomed to getting. One girl in my class said that she hated Spanish because it was her only “B”. Geneva Gay (2000) describes the “warm demander”, a teacher who is emotionally supportive and consistently demands high quality work from her students. The warm demander approach will be instrumental to implementing my third C: Challenge. In Adolescent Development, my professor told me a story about a World Language teacher who set higher-than-normal standards for her middle school students. By expecting high level work and scaffolding it accordingly, the students were able to achieve these standards. I am inspired by this story and have thought about it often, especially during my student teaching experiences. I believe that students can do more than we ask them to. It is such a huge confidence boost when students can finally hold a conversation in Spanish; yet many students never even gets to this point. Communicative Language Teaching stresses using whatever knowledge students have to start communicating right away. I also want to incorporate more history, culture and literature into my Spanish classes. I never had a chance to read in Spanish or learn about history until I reached the college level. With the necessary scaffolding and modifications, students could definitely tackle these areas of learning early on.
Learning a World Language is a challenge that many people do not want to undertake. It is difficult, certainly, but not impossible by any means. In Methods class, we read an article by Alice Omaggio. The following is an excerpt from that reading:
Paul Simon recounts the story of a Georgia school board member who approached Genelle Morain of the University of Georgia with the question: “Why should a student who will never leave Macon, Georgia study another language?” Her reply was succinct but profound: “That’s why he should study another language.” (Omaggio 2001)
Language study is challenging but truly important. Our world is getting smaller and smaller everyday and soon knowing only one language will be the exception rather than the rule. It is a challenge for students to open their minds to other ways of looking at society, but it is increasingly vital in today’s world. Perhaps some of my students will never leave the United States, but the world will come to them. With any luck, having a greater understanding of a culture other than our own will increase students’ acceptance of differences in an America that is getting progressively more diverse.
Geneva Gay (2000) says that, when interviewing students, a common theme was viewing school as “’homes away from home,’ places where [students] were nourished, supported, protected, encouraged, and held accountable. The students recalled their teachers having faith and conviction in the students’ abilities; being demanding, yet supportive and encouraging; and insisting that students have high aspirations to be the best that they could be” (Gay, 2000, p. 47). I want my classroom to be a place where students feel at home, where they can be themselves and where they can grow as learners, as well as people. By emphasizing my own Three Cs, I feel that I can achieve this goal.
