Preparation for Teaching Practice

Try to find out in advance:

• your learners’ special interests, former learning experiences, possible special problems;
• the course-book and other teaching materials that your Support Teacher uses in the groups you will teach;
• collect your personal material-bank, ideas, pictures, articles, stories, books, etc.;
• try to establish a bank of teaching ideas and materials; save them in file format;
• before class, familiarise yourself with any technical equipment you plan to use, and check whether and how they work;
• have a clear focus for every observation, don’t try to observe everything in a class;
• make sure to adjust to your Support Teachers’ schedule, syllabus, and the management routine that they have developed in their classes;

 

Teacher development

The assumption underlying this booklet is that there is no best way to teach in every setting. Teaching is an interactive process, involving teachers, students, tasks, teaching materials, social background, etc. Therefore, what works in one context may not work in another. This being the case, one can hardly ever give or expect prescriptions for good teaching. Instead of telling you how to teach, this booklet invites you to explore your own teaching beliefs and practices by observing yourself and other teachers from your past and present.

In connection with teachers’ professional development, Gebhard makes a few claims that we may agree or disagree with. These claims come as follows:

• being a competent teacher is not easy;
• even very experienced teachers need to consistently work on their development through exploration of beliefs about teaching and teaching practices. This process may often involve collaboration with others, and it will certainly lead to see your own teaching differently and more clearly, as well as generate creative new ways to teach;
• teaching can be learned: there are no born teachers (there are, however, people whose personalities, life experience, and natural ways of interacting are conducive to classroom teaching);
• there is no best way to teach in all settings.

(Gebhard, 1996, pp. 4-5)

 

Strategies for professional development

The claims made by Gebhard (1996) suggest the need for teachers’ ongoing development. However, the question arises: how does professional development occur? Is it through attending conferences? Reading professional journals? Talking with colleagues? Thinking about our own teaching?

Make a list of the strategies, both formal (e.g. attending conferences) or informal (e.g. sharing a professional worry with your colleagues) that you use for your professional development. Think of how useful they are for your development as a teacher. (Use a scale of 1-5, where 1 = not really useful/helpful and 5 = extremely useful/helpful). Also think about how congenial you find them? In other words, do they come easily and naturally to you, or does it take a real effort to embark on these strategies? (Use the same 1-5 scale).

Strategy	Useful?	Congenial?

(based on:Wallace, 1998, p.5)

When you have compiled your list, consider the folowing questions:

• Is self- and peer-observation among the strategies you have listed? If yes, why? If no, why not?
• Can reading a book on some aspect of language teaching promote professional development, and if yes, in what ways?
• How about private reflection?
• Can you think of other strategies that you have found useful in your development as a teacher?