Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is the most wonderful part of my life.

Through education, a person will acquire the vital skills and tools that are necessary to build a life that is successful and prosperous.

Thus, when I teach, I always have a feeling that I am able to make a lasting impact on a future generation. I truly believe that all learners are unique and must have a stimulating educational environment where they can grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. However, in many Asian countries, a teacher is actively involved in teaching while the learners are in a passive, receptive mode listening as the teacher teaches.

It is my desire to create this type of atmosphere where students can meet their full potential. I will provide a safe environment where students are invited to share their ideas and have more opportunities to develop their communication and critical thinking skills.

For this purpose, I will draw on my personal experience of learning English as a second language, as well as the pedagogical knowledge acquired through my studies in order to help my students improve their English.

I integrate, and reflect, the following values: Social interaction, games\activities, TPR, and the role of teacher-parent collaborations in a child’s academic achievements.

First of all, I believe that social interaction and communication can maximize language learning. I think when students interact with other peers it can be quite effective in assisting the learner to organize their thoughts and reflect on their understanding. As it was pointed out by Russian educational psychologist L.S.Vygotsky, social interactions play a critical role especially in the development of higher-order thinking skills, and cognitive development cannot be fully understood without considering the social and historical context within which it is embedded. He explained, “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57). For this reason, my teaching philosophy as a language teacher is to ensure that learners develop communicative competence in English by providing them opportunities to negotiate meaning while engaging in collaborative tasks.

Moreover, I believe in the power of games and activities that may help to create a stress-free and friendly environment which leads to positive language learning. Being a teacher we know that sometimes it may be challenging for students to produce language while learning. To help them cope with this challenge, I try to implement different types of games and activities which involve teamwork and collaboration with peers. I believe that activities can create a friendly and positive learning environment that increases overall motivation to learn, participate, and make them more attentive in tasks. Through play and activities, learners use language to interact with one another and help to move each other. Often, peers in play situations are the best ‘more knowledgeable others’ who teach their friends new ways of thinking and doing tasks.

Apart from that, I believe in the effectiveness of TPR (Total Physical Response) learning strategies, especially for my younger learners. TPR is a language teaching method built around the coordination of speech and action; it attempts to teach language through physical (motor) activity (Linse, 2005). That means, students do not have to just sit in one place the whole lesson, instead they are able to move around and have fun as well as memorable learning. Consequently, the more intensively a memory connection is traced, the stronger the memory association will be and the more likely it will be recalled.

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Last but not least, I assume that parents and teachers should actively collaborate with each other. Teachers face great challenges and often find it difficult to effectively meet the needs of all students (Narinasamy & Mamat, 2013). The creation of effective inclusive schools requires a combination of teachers’ and parents’ knowledge and skills on instructional strategies and assessment practices (Friend & Cook, 2007; Kampwirth, 2003). Firstly, by consulting with parents, I can learn more about my students’ cultures and bring those desirable cultural values and culturally-specific ways of learning into the classroom. Secondly, I hold the view that parents can help the teacher by letting them know about things happening at home. Sometimes when we notice that a student is not willing to participate in class activities or he is not attentive, teachers can consider it as laziness or misbehaving. However, this might be the result of some problems or misunderstandings at home which directly effects on student’s academic performance. Thus, communicating with parents can help me to understand what my students feel.

To sum up, my main teaching philosophy is to create interactive lessons that help learners develop language learning and social skills. From my experience, I can say that students learn best when they are actively engaged in fun and memorable activities and approaches to the learning process. At the same time, it increases learner’s engagement, motivation, and can help improve student’s performance. Also, when we work with young learners, education should take place within a relationship of families and professionals. As parents and teachers learn the value and methods of collaboration, they can create together an educational environment that supports the abilities of all children to succeed.