Finally, I returned to the classroom to teach academic
English again at the beginning of 2014 after about 10 years’ break. Over the
past ten years, I spent most of my time studying effective classroom
instructive strategies. After reading quite a lot of theories, watching many
teachers’ practice, and talking to numerous students, I thought that I had been
equipped with better knowledge and skills of teaching and would be a more
effective teacher than before. However, when I really teach in the actual
classroom, problems come and I am not very effective to deal with them as I
expected.
What on earth is the
use of all the reading, observation, and reflection then?
I still suppose they are not a pointless waste of time, but
I just need time to transfer them into practice.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
If I believe that one can become a good and effective teacher through practice,
I should keep on practicing and learning from my own lessons.
The past semester is not too bad, given that it was my first
semester; but it is also not so good, as the SFQ results (Student Feedback
Questionnaire) of 2 classes were quite low. I should say that I had a
struggling time last semester and I managed to survive at last.
Below are my summary and reflection on some of the most important
issues emerging from my teaching of last semester.
About Assessment and Feedback
o Assessment is
vital for students. Students are
keen to know their results, so finish the marking quickly and return the results
/ papers to the students ASAP.
o Prepare the
students for the assessment earlier.
Give them adequate time to digest the learning content. The last minute
preparation and teaching makes the students panic.
About the Discipline
Unexpectedly, discipline was a serious problem in my
class. There were a variety of discipline problems in my classes: being late, lousy eating behavior,
chatting, playing tablets, reading novels,
doing exercises of other subjects … … And I was not so effective in handling
these challenging behaviors.
There were a couple of times, I stopped teaching to attract
the noisy students’ attention, or gave the class a speech about the responsibility
of students in the classroom, and once I even could not help shouting at one
student, “Stop speaking!” But most of the time, I chose to ignore their
disturbing behaviors and the disciplinary problem became worse and worse toward
the end of semester.
On reflection, I think that it is teacher’s responsibility
to maintain good classroom discipline, which is important for an ideal learning
environment. I suppose just being strict and harsh to the students won’t work
well. Discipline is actually linked with other factors in teaching. If the
teaching content is interesting enough and the activities are engaging, most of
the disciplinary problems should disappear automatically. Therefore, I still
need to work on improving my teaching quality to solve the disciplinary problem
from the root.
Right now, I think that I can do better in the following
aspects:
o Be punctual! Arrive at the classroom 5 minutes earlier (It can also be
an alert for the previous teacher not to delay the class for too long).
o Start the
lesson on time. If I postpone the
serious staff to wait for the latecomers, the students would soon pick it up
and the problem of being late would become worse and worse.
o Be clear and
strict about the break time.
If I tell the students that we take a five-minute break, then the class has to
be resumed in five minutes.
o End the class
on time or even a couple of minutes earlier (by shortening the break time). Students' ears and brains would generally shut automatically in the last few minutes.
o
Give clear guidance of my expectations at the beginning and remind the students throughout the
semester through words and more importantly, consistent behavior.
About Teaching
o
Be
confident and relax. I should have confidence in myself that I have
adequate abilities to teach the students. Just relax. When I am relaxed, I can
perform better.
o
Try to engage
the students into more interactive and challenging activities step by step,
just as I am building up the trust with them gradually.
o
Make the
teaching and learning fun, e.g. by using games.
o Understand the students’ learning needs
more realistically and find ways to cater for them.
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