Developing Teaching Philosophy: a twisty path more than learning becoming a language teacher

Meeting objectives: 2, 3, 4

    Within these two years, I have written more than one “belief paper” for different courses. Probably, the very first one was the immature SOP starting with a cliché: “I love teaching since I was a child.” Now, I still love teaching, but I have more than just “love” to say. I am going to trace this path of my professional development by reflecting on three belief papers (you can also find them under MA-TESL and TESOL-Ecuador categories) as well as my teaching. Then I will come to the current, but not the final, version of “my belief.”

Worked with students in ESL015

From complex to pseudoconcept

    My identity as a language teacher tied with my identity as an English learner fight against the feeling of inferior. When I wrote my first belief paper, I could not help but relate my goal to “my fighting” by stating “Teaching is an empowering process which enables individuals to change the world, and language teaching is no exception — not because learners get a tool for communication, but they get a new way of thinking.” Although it seemed pretty open-ended to say “a new way of thinking,” the goal I set at that time was almost focused on how to help learners become aware of the power of language. This became my point of departure and my next step was specifying approaches or theories, which, on the one hand can cope with this power issue, and on the other hand, empower learners.

    While decoding my personal literacy development process, I embraced the language socialization paradigm and the Sociocultural Theory in my second belief paper. Although I “knew” them while working on the first paper, I did not know how to apply theories which did not provide specific methods (but then I found this is why SCT can situate flexibly in different contexts). I found SCT perfectly justifies my belief of acknowledging multilingual competence.

My students in Otavalo, Ecuador

Transforming through practices

    The teaching experience in Ecuador was a turning point. The impact of being a total “foreigner,” who had trouble communicating in everyday language, forced me became even humble to understand my students’ struggles. Additionally, through this practice teaching, I realized that I carried a distinct language learning experience from my American colleagues to Ecuador. As an EFL learner, I was more aware of my students’ difficulties, and I knew more strategies to deal with these problems. This was the first time I felt proud about my non-native English speaking background. I then felt relieved that my beliefs and goals were not that far-fetched.

    After I came back to Penn State, I got an opportunity to observe an ESL 015 class and tutored a student. The experience was not that different from the Ecuador’s, but it gave me an insight into ESL student’s struggle of mastering American academic writing. My observation then became a part of my third version of belief paper in which becoming a culturally responsive teacher was put into practices in my reacting toward students’ multilingual competence.

With my tutee from ESL015

Beliefs, developing and apply

        The beliefs below are the forth version of my developing philosophy.  

1.      Situated teaching is should be the first step:

Language teaching should be situated by analyzing sociocultural factors and mediating artifacts in different contexts. Instead of perusing effective teaching and learning as a final product, I take every process as a dialectical move which requires dynamic assessment and giving proper scaffolding.

2.      Transligual competence should be valued

When English become a global language, the understanding toward English learners should also be expended. Teachers should not neglect students’ multilingual competence, but think about how to develop students’ translingual competence. The learning objective should not be “mastering English,” but using both primary languages as well as English to become effective communicator.  

3.          Critical literacy skills toward language and language learning should be encouraged in EFL contexts  

Language teaching should not be limited to teach the language only. This is even true in EFL contexts. Thus, I hope my teaching can bring awareness to “English” and “English learning”: how it is selected, ideologically assigned, and context framed.