UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO AT HUMACAO ENGLISH DEPARTMENT Humacao, P.R. _____________________________________________________________________________
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
Melanie Quintana Torres EDPE4006-001 Prof. Maritza Reyes
Once I heard someone saying that teachers have to be like chameleons, or at least have the adaptability of one. At the moment I found it funny, but now that I am a teacher I understand it perfectly. Teachers have to adapt constantly and even so with these generations that change so much from year to year. As teacher we have to be prepared for everything in a classroom; there are so many situations, religions and different types of personality of people in only just one group that it’s challenging for just one person. We cannot forget the fact that in top of that we have to act accordingly and always have in mind that we are role models that we have to be respectful, mature, and open minded, politically correct and counselors at the same time. Tiny human beings are looking up to us and that puts a humongous amount of pressure on our shoulders. We have to create a diverse atmosphere for our students, we have to be imaginative and be on top of our game at all times and that includes technology. We also have to be role models and leaders so the students can look up to us and last but not least we have to make them believe they can aspire to do more without being too persistent and insisting in a specific point of view. The job of a teacher is not an easy one it comes with one too many responsibilities that cannot be taken lightly. Our English Department has Four Core Values in which it governs the classes and the rest of the English Department and emphasizes what I mentioned before. These Values are fundamental in the English department and it’s the foundation in which the BA was created. Those Four Core Values are based in what I mentioned before; Creativity, Leadership, Diversity and Social Transformation. As a practice teacher and as a student I was taught that I had to live by these Core values and that once in the practice I have to teach them to my students. It was not as simple as teaching them because these Values are not easy to instruct and I couldn’t do it in an
obvious way. Again I had to test myself and see what I could do in my practice teaching with the fundamental Core Values. The first Core Value is diversity. When you talk about diversity in a school one refers to the inclusion of individuals representing more than one national origin, color, religion, socioeconomic stratum, sexual orientation, among others in a classroom. This may sound obvious and easy but I had to be careful. In my group I had a lot of religious students that were from different religions and different beliefs so I had to speak carefully and respect their opinions. At this age is rather difficult to try and teach them something different from what they believe because at their age they are very opinionated. But what really help me teach them diversity were themselves. I had various students that had conditions that needed special attention. For example in my first group I had a blind girl which had a lot of situations in her house. What better way to teach them to include others and diversity if we were dealing with one. They learn diversity by this because I had to arrange different things to better the class for the girl. Even once a student told me to be careful because a noise I was making could irritate her. I learned from them a lot and they saw my effort to teach them about diversity. Another example of diversity would be my second group, I had a boy who suffered hearing impairment and was blind in one eye. What was beautiful about this was the fact that his friends took the time to learn sign language and help him in class and outside. I believe that with this generation diversity is not a problem they know the different situations that exists and what’s even better is that this generation is more open minded to change. This generation would aspire great things compare to the last one because they accept change I do believe we can achieve great things especially with racism and the gay community.
Demonstrating my Creativity was not a problem with my groups. I consider myself fairly creative, I cannot draw or paint that good but I have a pretty big imagination and a lot of motivation. Throughout the semester I decorated the classroom, especially the classroom door and the chalk board I like to leave messages to help them think differently. Every Friday I created a game to help them practice what we were studying. Also I made them do different projects in which creativity was crucial in their evaluation. For example I asked the to create alternate endings to a story, I ask them to draw another ending for a story, I ask them to create a summary by doing a scene by scene sphere, among others. I believe creativity go hand-in-hand with motivation, if a teacher aspires to motivate her students the result will be motivated creative students. Leadership in my classroom was not a problem either, I had students with really strong personality and they were really active in class. For those who were a little shy I encourage them to speak out loud by assigning readings and making them mention me the classroom rules when others misbehave. They really enjoyed that because when the rest of the group was misbehaving and a quiet, shy student “nag� them the atmosphere of the classroom changed. Also, another way in which leadership was encouraged was every Friday on game day. I divided the students into groups and each group had to choose a leader or I assigned one. It was really interesting seeing the students choosing. When they had trouble choosing I choose for them to help them, I usually choose the quiet ones to give them opportunity in leadership too. Last but not least is Social Transformation. This may have been the most difficult to do because as a teacher we have the responsibility to teach our children not only academically but also morally. The best way I believe I taught my students social transformation was to make them aspire for more. I cannot believe how frustrated I got because of their own frustrations.
They do not believe in themselves and think very poorly of themselves. It took me a whole semester to convince the majority of them to go to college and consider different careers. The problem in the school was that it was a Vocational High School and because they learn in their workshop to be paramedics, barbers, beauticians and chefs, etc. they didn’t aspire to keep studying or to have others careers. It was really sad hearing them say that after high school they didn’t want to do anything with their lives. I spent my whole semester enamoring them about the different types of careers and universities. I encouraged my students to aim higher and I taught them that they set their own limits. I really hope my message got thru to them and in a future I really hope to see them working as professionals.