OULGOUT
12-11-2010, 05:20 PM
One of the best ways to improve one’s way of teaching is the action taken to globally evaluate our performance in class during the whole year. Evaluating one’s way of teaching and reflecting on it provide the teacher with a precious opportunity to notice his or her points of strength as well as the areas that need improvement. Yet, the way the global evaluation of our performance is done is not authentic or even real. It is usually inspector-dependent and surrounded with instantaneous official statements and protocol, passing heavy judgments on us without any sense of objectivity or enough data to rely on. Consequently, the inspector-judge falls into making up false testimonies on the teacher observed just to cover certain, often personal, administrative requirements. I herby say:”students can notice what theories and theorists fail to”.
First, inspectors, at least in our educational system, can’t provide authentic remarks about the teacher observed, simply because their visits are brief and seldom. This is to say that there is no way to objectively estimate one’s general performance in the classroom until the person carrying out that estimation is always present on the scene where the action of teaching takes place. A short visit to the field doesn’t guarantee any objective outcome. It happens that the teacher might be under unprecedented bad circumstances, which made him confused even well prepared, and surprised by the observer visit at that hour. Imagine the situation!!! Would the inspector half-an-hour visit per a year or half a year be sufficient to recognise the teacher’s skills, potentialities, and philosophy of teaching?
Second, even if the observer had been able to daily attend your sessions, would he have, again, been able to provide an authentic estimation of your performance? Of course not. The observer couldn’t have been so, because your teaching messages are not directed to him, but to your students. Then, the one(s) who is supposed to provide his or her feedback about what you teach, how you teach, and the effects your teaching results in is the student himself. If teaching was a matter of dry techniques and structures, then the observer would ever be the best one to supply objective observations. Yet, teaching is more than that; Teaching, or rather learning is a question of meta-cognitive and affective factors operating inside students. These factors determine how students feel whenever a lesson or even a quick and brief teaching action is performed. Satisfaction or discontent, understanding or misunderstanding is to be expressed by the one(s) who is targeted, undergoes the action, and always present in the field: the student.
Third, students can notice what theories and theorists can’t. This is one of the basic outcomes I came up with when I conducted an open survey including thirty questions about my performance in teaching this year. My students answered the questions, expressing their feelings and opinions, and I was really astonished at their feedbacks. They drew my attention to many things I didn’t pay attention to, or I simply didn’t consider so crucial. For instance, some of the students complained about allocating a special test to the fliers in my classes. They consider this as a sign of discrimination and injustice among my students, and they suggested to me to be just and look at them as equal. Another wrote that I hurt her feelings when I laughed after her answer to a question. Others argued that the space of my voice is too fast, and my handwriting on the board is a bit small though beautiful…etc.
These remarks are undoubtedly authentic and INNOCENT, for they reflect what students feel and experience in their depth and, therefore, address me to make the necessary modifications to meet students’ expectations and learning preferences. These facts would never come to existence if the evaluation was left to the inspector alone, and students-actors were not involved in the feedback process.
Much talk has gone, among the community of teachers, around learner’s needs to master a foreign language; yet to be creative in teaching, I believe, is the most required quality a language learner would need to construct his learning. What is it meant by Creative Teaching? On what principles it is founded? And how does a Creative Teacher differ from his traditional fellows?
Teaching creatively resembles teaching effectively. Effectiveness is the number one standard distinguishing Creative Teaching from any other mode of instruction. No teaching is creative without being effective, and no teaching is effective without being simultaneously creative. Creativity and effectiveness to a modal language teacher are as twins to their mother. When learners are able to turn the knowledge they are taught into actual outcomes, authentically and appropriately, one can simply judge teaching to be effective and creative.
CT is so creative because of its variety and openness. To be a Creative Teacher you ought to take off your fashionable black glasses and put on up-to-date colorful ones. You ought to open up new horizons for new ideas and expectations. Teaching is no longer that predictable; everything is possible to happen in a way you have never expected. Think about nothing and everything and think up open and varied plans for anything you might imagine or intend to do. Never have one mode of thinking and doing things because the people you are addressing cannot be resumed into one stereotypical category; each leaner has got his own profile- style, preferences, mode, temper, experiences, and even DNA- and should be dealt with differently and accordingly.
A Creative Teacher is a successful thinker, producer and investor. He is not that man who pursues his fellow teachers to consume their plans and thoughts only to fill in the gaps and kill the time; he is rather an effective thinker who spends most of his time to produce something new and reform others’ thoughts and plans by adding his personal touches and leaving his impact and impressions on everything traditional. This is one of the highest ways of modernizing teaching: the personalization of teaching) the meaning of this concept here is different from the concept teachers are familiar with in ELT literature). When a Creative Teacher sits down to plan a lesson his mind works hard, bringing into mind everything that can affect teaching: the audience, the environment, the teaching tools, techniques, process; and any mental, affective, and behavioral action that might affect both teaching and learning. Until his teaching is productive, a teacher will never be successful.
A Creative Teacher always puts the blame on himself. In contrast to teachers who always accuse their students of being stupid, put the blame on their tools to defend their failure, and insult the administration for not providing them with the necessary materials and instruments; creative teachers always try to find ways for their hopes to come true. And because they are self-reliant and believe in their profession, they usually see difficulties in ELT as actual possibilities. We cannot deny the negative impact of many factors on the outcomes of ELT; yet freeing your thinking from those handicaps and negative feelings keeps your thinking positive and triggers your internal motivation to pull the wheel of your profession forward.
First, inspectors, at least in our educational system, can’t provide authentic remarks about the teacher observed, simply because their visits are brief and seldom. This is to say that there is no way to objectively estimate one’s general performance in the classroom until the person carrying out that estimation is always present on the scene where the action of teaching takes place. A short visit to the field doesn’t guarantee any objective outcome. It happens that the teacher might be under unprecedented bad circumstances, which made him confused even well prepared, and surprised by the observer visit at that hour. Imagine the situation!!! Would the inspector half-an-hour visit per a year or half a year be sufficient to recognise the teacher’s skills, potentialities, and philosophy of teaching?
Second, even if the observer had been able to daily attend your sessions, would he have, again, been able to provide an authentic estimation of your performance? Of course not. The observer couldn’t have been so, because your teaching messages are not directed to him, but to your students. Then, the one(s) who is supposed to provide his or her feedback about what you teach, how you teach, and the effects your teaching results in is the student himself. If teaching was a matter of dry techniques and structures, then the observer would ever be the best one to supply objective observations. Yet, teaching is more than that; Teaching, or rather learning is a question of meta-cognitive and affective factors operating inside students. These factors determine how students feel whenever a lesson or even a quick and brief teaching action is performed. Satisfaction or discontent, understanding or misunderstanding is to be expressed by the one(s) who is targeted, undergoes the action, and always present in the field: the student.
Third, students can notice what theories and theorists can’t. This is one of the basic outcomes I came up with when I conducted an open survey including thirty questions about my performance in teaching this year. My students answered the questions, expressing their feelings and opinions, and I was really astonished at their feedbacks. They drew my attention to many things I didn’t pay attention to, or I simply didn’t consider so crucial. For instance, some of the students complained about allocating a special test to the fliers in my classes. They consider this as a sign of discrimination and injustice among my students, and they suggested to me to be just and look at them as equal. Another wrote that I hurt her feelings when I laughed after her answer to a question. Others argued that the space of my voice is too fast, and my handwriting on the board is a bit small though beautiful…etc.
These remarks are undoubtedly authentic and INNOCENT, for they reflect what students feel and experience in their depth and, therefore, address me to make the necessary modifications to meet students’ expectations and learning preferences. These facts would never come to existence if the evaluation was left to the inspector alone, and students-actors were not involved in the feedback process.
Much talk has gone, among the community of teachers, around learner’s needs to master a foreign language; yet to be creative in teaching, I believe, is the most required quality a language learner would need to construct his learning. What is it meant by Creative Teaching? On what principles it is founded? And how does a Creative Teacher differ from his traditional fellows?
Teaching creatively resembles teaching effectively. Effectiveness is the number one standard distinguishing Creative Teaching from any other mode of instruction. No teaching is creative without being effective, and no teaching is effective without being simultaneously creative. Creativity and effectiveness to a modal language teacher are as twins to their mother. When learners are able to turn the knowledge they are taught into actual outcomes, authentically and appropriately, one can simply judge teaching to be effective and creative.
CT is so creative because of its variety and openness. To be a Creative Teacher you ought to take off your fashionable black glasses and put on up-to-date colorful ones. You ought to open up new horizons for new ideas and expectations. Teaching is no longer that predictable; everything is possible to happen in a way you have never expected. Think about nothing and everything and think up open and varied plans for anything you might imagine or intend to do. Never have one mode of thinking and doing things because the people you are addressing cannot be resumed into one stereotypical category; each leaner has got his own profile- style, preferences, mode, temper, experiences, and even DNA- and should be dealt with differently and accordingly.
A Creative Teacher is a successful thinker, producer and investor. He is not that man who pursues his fellow teachers to consume their plans and thoughts only to fill in the gaps and kill the time; he is rather an effective thinker who spends most of his time to produce something new and reform others’ thoughts and plans by adding his personal touches and leaving his impact and impressions on everything traditional. This is one of the highest ways of modernizing teaching: the personalization of teaching) the meaning of this concept here is different from the concept teachers are familiar with in ELT literature). When a Creative Teacher sits down to plan a lesson his mind works hard, bringing into mind everything that can affect teaching: the audience, the environment, the teaching tools, techniques, process; and any mental, affective, and behavioral action that might affect both teaching and learning. Until his teaching is productive, a teacher will never be successful.
A Creative Teacher always puts the blame on himself. In contrast to teachers who always accuse their students of being stupid, put the blame on their tools to defend their failure, and insult the administration for not providing them with the necessary materials and instruments; creative teachers always try to find ways for their hopes to come true. And because they are self-reliant and believe in their profession, they usually see difficulties in ELT as actual possibilities. We cannot deny the negative impact of many factors on the outcomes of ELT; yet freeing your thinking from those handicaps and negative feelings keeps your thinking positive and triggers your internal motivation to pull the wheel of your profession forward.