My Weekly Journals

Week 1

It is meaningful to remember that, since the first day of the two allowed weeks for observation, I started to get along with the students of the seventh graders. Since I stepped in the class I introduced to them and they were really interested since the beginning to get to know me. I was pretty much intimidated because of the amount of students in the classroom. The first class to teach to them was memorable, as I had never taught to a big class before. I am a teacher, I teach in a private school where the amount of students differs from a public institution. While in a private school there are allowed to be among 15 to 20 students, in a public school the maximum number is pretty much until 50. So, the reason why I was freaking out was because I was not sure whether the amount of students had a significant change in terms of teaching. So, three days before my first week of teaching for this public institution would begin I started to design my lesson plan.

The main topic to teach the students was the prepositions of time. I looked for fun and entertained games to play while the students could learn in a dynamic way. As I had observed in the previous classes with their English teacher that the classes were boring and pointless, I decided to bring joy to the whole class. At the end, students were pretty engaged with the topic and the games that I brought during the week. They said they would love if I kept the classes like that way as they enjoyed it a lot. That was the very first concurrence to get to know my students. I wanted to test them or pretty much to know whether they had learnt or not. So, on the second day of that first week I printed some exercises with the prepositions of time (on – at) just to make sure they understood. As the games took a lot of the time of the class, I had to assign that sheet of paper as homework rather than an exercise for the class. On the next day, after the class was over I picked up the homework that I had assign the day before and I took the sheets of paper home. After had checked them, I realized that most of the students had brought the homework and that they did it pretty well.

Week 2

There was one preposition of time left, as part of the design. The last preposition of time was “in”. As this preposition is very broad and it takes many topics or aspects related to time. I decided to give it a two-class-teaching. I brought my students two videos in which someone was mentioning when we use “in” as a preposition. The examples of the two videos seemed very clear to me. However, I realized that some of my students did not understand the videos. So, what I did was to report what those two people said in a way that my students could understand. When I finished giving that information, I asked my students whether they understood me or not and the answer was positive from all of them.

I think it is important to say that something relevant that I noticed in these two classes was that most of the students were not engaged with the topic, I believe it was because the students were expecting me to bring them more game but I did it because I wanted to make sure if it was true that they wanted me to teach them English through games.

The last day of this second week I decided to test them. So, I tested them. The test was about the topic of the prepositions (In – on –at). Students did it pretty good at it. 85% of the students passed the exam with a grade of 4.0. The others had a lower grade. But I understand that the development of everyone’s mind is different and it takes more time to develop or less time to develop. At the end of this week I ended up voiceless. My voice has gone and I don’t know where but I believe it was worth it because my main scope was achieved.

Week 3

For this week of teaching I designed a series of games. The main topic was verbs. So, planned on my lesson plan a list of verbs that I previously chose to teach. I wanted my students to learn the present and the past tense of those verbs. The first game that I brought to the class was the hot-verb-potato. This game is a game for learning while playing. My students were pretty engaged again with this game. After reviewing the list, the students had to say a verb in the target language (of course the verb had to be chosen from the list). If they weren’t sure of the pronunciation, then they had to do a mimic to the class and the rest of the students had to guess what the verb was. Students showed many signs of joy and excitement. At the end of this class, some of the students came close to me to tell me that they had never played a game like this before in their English classes. Accordingly, I thought that what these students wanted was to have active English classes instead of the same monotonous classes like the ones they had been having.

Another great exercise that I noticed that my students loved was the crafts class. This class was unforgettable I can tell. The second class of this past week, I decided to create some sort of communicative approach in my class. In such manner, I asked them the class before to bring a cardboard for the next day. Of course not all of the students brought the cardboard. However, I was prepared and I brought 10 cardboards for the students who had forgotten to bring it to the class. I asked the students to cut the cardboard into 12 pieces and to write a verb from the list on it. I also told them to add finishing touches to their 12 pieces of cardboard. They spent the whole class in this exercise to what I had previously assigned 30 minutes maximum but as a request from most of my students, we had to take some more minutes, which let us with no time at the end.

The next day (last class of the week) we could finally do the activity that I had planned for them before. Students had to show a piece of cardboard to another student and he or she had to say a sentence using the past simple of that verb. Students were pretty happy, engaged and entertained during the whole class. I decided to organize the class before the class was over and talk to them about this activity. I asked them whether they liked the class or not but they did, they told me they found this activity very meaningful for them because they could interact with the classmates and that was pretty significant for them as they thought that talking to others in the English language would prepared them to have a conversation with others. I ended up very enthusiastic because I knew that I was going through a good direction to guide my students in this process of teaching.

Week 4

It was not possible for me to teach during the whole week because of a strike. However, I could teach one class meaning one hour in the week. I also decided to spend at least 4 hours planning a great class for that day. As I will be teaching a new topic in the following week, I will have to be prepared and to have a variety of ways for teaching my students. I have been thinking about the class few classes with my students and I have come into the conclusion that this practicum has done such wonderful professional and personal development in me. I have realized that I can do things that I thought before that were not possible at all. I have grown in a professional aspect because I can surely say that I can accomplish professional goals and I can accomplish achievements that I never though about. I am very happy according to what I have achieved until now.

I am very happy with the process that I have been part of and I really appreciate the opportunity of teaching and allow me to do such tremendous impact in this public institution. This student-teacher practicum is an open door to know what and how it is like to be a teacher and to discover things I did not know before. I can say that I am not the same as I was before I started teaching here and that I am growing professionally and personally and that this practicum has helped me in some many ways to get to know myself and my own way of teaching successfully.

Week 5

For this week I brought my students some games for teaching irregular verbs. Students were pretty engaged in the last two classes of learning new verbs and nouns and words and we learnt a lot about us. I learnt that patience here is the key for teaching and that not the whole time students are going to keep things in order or that not all the students are going to learn at the same pace. I discovered that I have the willingness to endure under any of the last circumstances at this school. I enjoyed every time I spend teaching with the kids, they seemed pretty happy learning and discovering new things in the English language. This week was one of those weeks that we learn a lot from people and other teachers too.

Week 6

This practicum came to an end and I am pretty happy because of it. It has been hard as at the school the executives are asking for the grades and exams and everything. However, I could grade them. I know that a grade does not necessarily define a students or someone but it help measure the students knowledge and capacity to read, write, speak and listen. I was very fair and impartial. I wanted to grade my students taking into account the four communicative skills. Those grades did not grade them in a written way but I was aware enough to help them to be accounted for what they knew in the all four ways we all know.

Eight grades supported the final grade in which two grades would count for each communicative skill. We agreed on this since the beginning of the fourth term and I am really happy that none of my students failed the course. Which is something reliable and it let me know that it is important to allow the student agree on how they are going to be graded in the course. I believe I will never forget this, as I had never done this before. I have always been told to grade them in a written way but it is not going to be like that anymore. It is important to let the learners know that they matter, their knowledge matter and the ways in which they are going to be graded really matters. 

I also learnt that, it is important to set at the beginning of each class what is going to be learnt and at the end of the same class whether they learnt what was supposed to be learnt. In this way, the teacher and the students are both aware of the is going on in the class, otherwise everything is pointless. This is something I learnt from my supervisor, who has given me so many advices, tips and has told me many of his experiences of teaching and how he has handled those and how the should be handled. Anyways, I am pretty happy of what I have achieved in this educational process of teaching.  All kind of experiences are always welcomed because they always teach us something that we need to learn whether we like it or not. Thanks god, my experience was really good at this school because I taught me relevant thing that I was not aware of before.

Autobiography

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Going back to my childhood is not as easy as it sounds. However, those unforgettable memories such as the ones one gets because of a variety of moments of shock or shining moments. My very first approach to the teaching field experience happened when one of my obnoxious cousins had some trouble understanding the English language. I was in the fifth grade by then same as him. As we were attending to the same grade, same teachers and same graders we had to see one another every single day from Monday to Friday. I had got to know most of my classmates and my teacher very well. Back then in the fifth grade all the English classes were basically translating words and rarely the teacher taught us tenses in the target language. The classes were traditional and strict –students were not allowed to talk to each other during the class, we were afraid to talk because if we did, she would yell at us, she would not let us stand up when we have doubts or concerns…-, all of them. As my cousin was very obnoxious no one would offer to help him when he would not understand a topic related to any subject –not even my teacher-. So, I was happy to help him. We met in my house, he told me his issues about some topics and fortunately I was an outstanding student in the English subject. So, I told him to try to imagine the meaning of the word when he saw the word. “Déjame te explico” I said. “ Cada que leas una palabra en Inglés busca un recuerdo o una imagen que mas te llame la atención de su traducción por ejemplo la palabra tall que significa alto, para que memorices la palabra, acuérdate que termina en l, la l es un palito, si juntamos la otra l y ponemos una encima de la otra vamos a tener un palito alto que represente la palabra alto o también, ah mira, acuérdate del tío Leo ya que el es una persona muy alta y listo, así con todo”. I literally said that and from there on, my cousin never had any trouble understanding words in the English language. 

Although, after that year we never saw each other again because he moved with my aunt to another city. Two years ago, I saw him at my grandma’s house visiting and the first thing he said to me was how thankful he was because of me and due to the extra class I gave him more than a decade ago, he said he found an inspiration in learning English that took him to the US to work for a company as a translator for business sales. I was so glad that my skills to teach inspired someone so close to me to do something extraordinary because of one shining moment.

Six years ago, I was in high school. I studied at Liceo de Santa Librada School and I was in the senior year of the English technique. Right before the third term was going to be over, the English teacher told us to pick one topic learnt between fresh and senior year of the English technique. Of course, my classmates chose easy topics that they knew by heart. As for me, I wanted to take risks, so, I chose the most complex topic at that time which was the past perfect tense mixed with prepositions of time. The teacher never told us what we were supposed to do with that, she just said we had to pick one. The next class, we were ready to hear what the plan was so, the teacher said: “please, write down in a piece of paper your topic followed by your full name and give it to me” to what we happily did. After that, the teacher said: “Alright girls, now each one of you will have to teach me and your classmates the topic you chose. You will have 15 minutes to explain, no more no less” We were frozen because we didn’t expect that. I must admit that in general, it was a complex task at that time, as we never thought we would be teachers one day. I never had that in mind till the time to explain the topic arrived. I felt confident that day, studied hard the previous week, I surfed on the Internet different ways to teach that tense. As the English classes were so fun and interactive at that time, I used some of the activity that the teacher used. I began teaching the tense by providing the grammar rules to what I wrote in pieces of cardboards some words that helped me save time, a power point presentation to provide examples and I designed a Who Wants To Be a Millionaire game. I must say I really enjoyed that day and it was worth the agitation. At then end of the provided time the teacher gave me, all of my classmates including my English teacher stood up and gave me a round of applause. I could see their smiling faces all over the classroom; the teacher congratulated me as well as my classmates did. On the recess time, one of my classmates, someone who I did not interact that much with said she was really proud of my skills to teach, and that she was amazed and astonished to when I was teaching, she said she saw a light in my eyes and the way I spoke to the whole class was pretty convincing.

I must admit that since I heard that, I have always believed that someone who teaches is someone who is gifted and that has the passion to inspire others. I will never forget my two most precious and unforgettable memories that I have from years before. Teachers are meant to influence others in many different positive ways; teachers are born with passion within themselves. I swear I have seen them. I have had many teachers in my life and each one of them have been so different as for their ways of teaching, as for their personalities, as for their ways of involving with the students. Anyways, I have had great experiences in my learning process throughout my whole academic life.  Of course, there are other teachers who never thought they would be teachers in the future, like me. I never thought that I would ever be a teacher. It was only when I was right before to graduate from high School that my best friend and I were wondering about what we were going to do with our lives after the graduation.

One week before graduation, I was skipping Math classes with my best friend. We climbed a big tree in which we loved spending time at in the recess time or when we wanted to talk about something important. So, back at that time I remember that it was the last time we would spend there. My best friend was wondering about her plans in a near future. As she didn’t know what to do with her life, she actually made me wonder about my future too. So, we started to think about it. Indeed, we began to question ourselves, the questions were some sort of like: what do we like to do? What do we like to actually do it for a living? What is worth the time to spend it studying for 5 years in a row at some university? What are we really good at? What programs are out there? How much money do those programs cost? How much money we can make our parents pay for a program? To what we answered with a complex I don’t know. Something huge was coming, some unknown future was going to be made by me, by the decisions I had to make. So, I had to make sure that I was absolutely sure about my future plans that I was about to decide. As my best friend and I couldn’t answer those questions right away we decided to take them home and think about all of them. As those questions were super important, I had to take them seriously because they were worth it.

So the next day we met and she was the first one to talk. She said she liked languages a lot, she had enjoyed learning it for several years however, she wasn't sure about what to do with that to what I said, well, I'm in the same situation as you then, let's study that! So, we searched and unfortunately there wasn't any program that would match with our parents' pockets. Later, we searched on public programs and the only one that matched was whether the Ileusco Institute or the English teaching program. So, we were sure that the institute wasn't worth it because we had been studying English for two years; we thought we had had enough of it. So we gave it a try. We decided to study in the English teaching program because we wanted to be together. I must say we were not sure about that decision at the moment but we were sure that we were meant to be together. At that moment, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a teacher or even an English teacher but I knew I had to start at some point in my life and it was just in front of me. I knew that I couldn't let my life go by and that I would notice that. So, that was my very big first step I took in this wild journey on learning how to be a teacher. 

The first semester was chaotic, it was a complete chaos. I never imagined how complex the life of a teacher would be inside and outside of a classroom. I found it quite hard to catch up because I never  ever thought how involved all of the classes would be related to the development of the human being and the processes of teaching and learning in the educational field. However, my best friend and I were together, that was all that mattered to me at that time and when any of us had trouble to understand something, we would help each other. Nonetheless, by the second year, I started to like teaching because I was growing personally, intellectually and I was getting to know more about the educational field. I was motivated and I believed that that was something for starters like me. As I was deeply motivated to teach, I had this crazy idea of going to the battle. I wanted to experience what it was like to be a teacher, I wanted to know everything about it. So, I told myself, if I really want to be doing this for the rest of my life, I must know now what it is like and what to expect. 

Accordingly, I applied for a job as an English for a public primary institution in one of the most dangerous neighborhood in my city. I did not care about the place that much but to be hired because my main objective was to be a teacher and to experience what it was like to be an English teacher for primary students. The same day I applied I was hired and I was told to start as soon as possible, I organized my schedule because I had to teach 10 hours per week. I started to work the next day and I was really excited about it, I couldn't believe it. The night before I planned something fun for the students as it was the second month of the year, the students were new to the school. The first day that I started to work, I was pretty nervous but it was not that much until I arrived to the class. The first class I taught for a school was to the fifth graders. There were 48 students in the class. I could not believe it, the class was full of students, fortunately the classroom was so big that all the students could sit down and utilize a chair for each one. The students were very nice with me the whole time and I was happy at the end of the week because I had taught to nearly 200 students. This first encounter of teaching was wonderful because it made me realize that I really wanted to be a teacher. I worked there for 2 years until I left to the USA to be an Au Pair. But, I will always be grateful with my students and the other teachers at that school they were very kind and friendly with me. 

These have been the most unforgettable memories that I have in terms of teaching. I can reassure to myself that owing to those experiences I am who I am and those concurrences have made me grow in all personal, academic and professional aspects in my life. I really appreciate those moments with students in and out the classroom. The students that I have had throughout my experience at schools have been extraordinary little people. In addition, the experience at the public school opened the doors of my mind to get involved into my students lives and their hearts. Those kids opened their hearts to me and they made me a wonderful person. Every time I finished a class with them, they would usually came close to me and showed me their appreciation through hugs or nice words or food and candies even fruits. They were so affectionate and showed me respect that are unforgettable memories for me. They still remember me and say hi to me and I know that everyday I did a great job at that school because before I left, students and the other teachers told me so many kind words and an exceptional speech that will remind into my heart forever. Thanks to them, I have become an awesome person and admirable teacher. 

Video Recordings of a Before/During/After lesson plan.

Click below here to watch my video in Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3tsEefsfHs&t=9s

Seventh task

ESSAY OUTLINE

Topic: Journalism: the digital era and its influence on information.

Thesis statement: News and newspapers do whatever it takes to make its readers believe that the information they provide is real.

Supporting argument: the importance of language: critical literacy proposed by Ira Shor (1999).

Supporting details: cultural reality proposed by Kramsch (1998).

Supporting argument: with the arrival of the digital era –the new technology and the internet- we have experienced wide changes and impressive transformations that have remained in the society worldwide since then.

Supporting details: provide examples of the transformations being made since the arrival of the digital era.

Supporting argument: the weak usage of being critical.

Supporting detail: consequences of using a weak sense of criticism.

Supporting argument: a strong usage of being critical.

Supporting detail: the way how the critical readers have been idealized.

Supporting argument: the hegemony of the digital era.

Supporting details: the hegemony is being secured by the dominant class by supplying practices of social life in a way that the basis of social authority and the unequal relations of power and privilege remain hidden.

Supporting argument: the ideology of the digital era.

Supporting details: how the media show us the way of viewing the world, the complex of ideas, various types of social practices, rituals and representations that we tend to accept as natural and as common sense.

Supporting argument: the digital era in education.

Supporting detail: online education as a key to success.

Supporting argument: the integration of hegemony, ideology and education.

Supporting detail: references.

Sixth Task

 "Where is the Outrage? Critical Pedagogy in Dark Times

Education has always been a way to get a job but what Mr Giroux thinks is that education should be more than that. Education has to be considered as essential for understanding and overcoming the current crisis of  agency, politics and historical memory faced by the young people. That takes us to a need to use education to mobilize students to be critically engaged agents, attentive to addressing important social issues and being alert to the responsibility of deepening and expanding the meaning and the practice of an insurrectional and radical democracy. The awareness of all of these social issues and taking action to face all of these aspects mentioned are what will help us develop a critical pedagogy.

Therefore, what educators nowadays should work on to create the economic, political and ethical conditions necessary to empower young people with the capacities to think, question, doubt, imagine the unimaginable, and defend education as essential for inspiring and energizing  what might called critically engaged responsible citizens is to adopt a new language for addressing the changing context and facing issues, issues facing a world in which there is an unprecedented convergence of resources that are increasingly used to concentrate powerful and diverse forms of control and domination.  That language, the one that needs to be created has political without being dogmatic and needs to recognize that pedagogic is always political because it's always connected to the struggle over agency. 

Fifth task B

Select one exercise from each of the following list of topics and solve them in your blog by providing a detailed explanation of your answer. Please, include the prompt (instruction), the passage and your explained answer. 

TOPICS: 

• Underlying assumptions

I think that the first line in the paragraph stated above: "Children are costing parents more" is the underlying assumption because the person who wrote this paragraph believes in something that he or she personally thinks. It might or might not be true, however he or she is giving his own belief from what he or she has experienced. The writer has provided some arguments to his assumption that children cost a lot. The examples provided are pretty clear and try to persuade even if I do not think the same as he or she does. 

• Implicit assumptions used as reasons 

I believe that the last 3 lines form the conclusion of the paragraph. 

The implicit assumptions used as reasons to support the conclusion are: 

1. That people were more organic because they used resources from the nature to cure themselves.
2. That plants were used as a method to cure illness.
3. The pharmaceutical industry often use plants as the basis for the medicines.
4. Medicines are expensive to produce. 
5. Medicinces are expensive to purchase. 

• False premises 

The above argument is based on a false premise because the writer of that statement believes that the quality of the programmes that are produced will improve by adding more channels on digital television. The fact that more channels are going to be added doesn't mean that the quality of them is going to improve.  Increasing the number of channels give us lots of variety about what to see, that is a real fact but it doesn't necessarily means that the quality of those are going to improve. There are many different kind of programmes that can be added (children, animals, tv shows, movies, adult programmes) but who will assure that there is going to be a better quality? 

• Implicit arguments

In the above example, the implicit argument is that the person who wrote this statement believes that the candidate is a hero and has done things that most candidates don't do like stealing from the nation or making electoral promises about taxes. This person believes on everything the candidate says even if he is lying. The person has already been persuaded by the candidate and now he believes in everything the candidate is saying. 

Here we can see that has been an appearance of attempting to persuade. The purpose of the candidate was to put an idea into this writer's head without appearing to do so. 

• Stereotypes

In the stereotype number 1 there has been a continuous belief that pink color always represents girls but we cannot just believe that because the blue or purple color can represent a girl too. Not only the pink one.

In the stereotype number 3 has been an assumption that all the British people eat roast beef only but that is not true at all.  

In the stereotype number 4 those people believe on the concept that all the people who have red hair are angry which is not true. 

In the stereotype number 6 the judgement of football fans being trouble in the game. 

In the stereotype number 8 the fact that people retire and get old doesn't mean that the interest of being involved in fashion or computer fades out. 

• Assuming causal links 

In the example above, life expectancy is getting higher same as obesity is a fact but it doesn't mean that obesity must increase in life expectancy. I mean, it is only women who can give birth instead of men and in the example there are no diagrams or numbers that can prove that women are more obese than men. That means that obesity has nothing to do with life expectancy because men can be more obese than women but they do not procreate. 

• Identifying the nature of the link 

In the example above, there is not link between the reason and the conclusion. There exist a correlation among the three scientists about having long hair which let us know that there is a coincidental pattern only. In conclusion, having long hair doesn't mean that someone is going to be a great scientist. 

• False analogies

The analogy of the example above is the comparison between an argument and the premises. This comparison is valid.