Some Information about me & my teaching

Hello, this is the 1st time I have created a BLOG. great experience! it was easier than I thought!
It is here where I´ll start and express my reflextions and stages of my  teaching practice.





Video: Challenges of my teaching career

Let´s start with my presentation. I´m Paula Schulze and I have been teaching for several years. I have taught at primary and secondary levels at school but I have also taught at companies. I have been in love with English since I have memory. I wondered how people could understand someone talking in another language than the mother tongue. I clearly recall the day I decided to learn English to understand what other people were saying. Fond of gossiping? Who knows!

But then it became the issue of teaching, my mother is a teacher and probably I thought highly of her profession so here I am.

During my first years learning English, the Audio Lingual and PPP approaches were mainly the way to teach the language. So when the Communicative Approach was implemented at the institute I studied at, it was a complete revolution!

So now, as a teacher, I clearly like to promote the use of the target language to convey ideas, to show how you see the world through English. Of course learners must be motivated and therefore the activities, material and aims have to be realistic to my students’ environment. A daily challenge!

I love the expression "adapt and not adopt" because it clearly shows the dynamic and also flexible attitude the teacher must have not only in the professional field but also in life!

Some of my teaching principles are:

• Students learn in different ways
• Students have different abilities and interests
• Teachers have to promote the teaching of different skills but also different thinking abilities to promote knowledge as well
• Teachers have to rely on the learners´ previous knowledge to construct meaning while they are learning
• Learning is an active and social process: students do things with words while they interact with others
• Teachers must deliberately promote self-reflection on the learners´ learning process but also about their own teaching development

These principles are and will be a challenge in themselves for the years to come!

Here some food for thought!

I have also learned that this teaching profession I have chosen is an endless trip not only as regards the target language I have to teach but also as regards the strategies that can be used to develop my students´ learning capacities.

I am already collecting at work some rewards result of these principles put into practice, always trying to be coherent between what I think and what I do.

Books I have read this year!

Both of them connected to our professional matter and both of them highly recommended!

Reasons to devote enough time to plan the classes!

There is something I have learned during these years at “the prof” and that is the importance of devoting enough time to the planning stage.

Before, I was convinced it was needed but now I believe it is compulsory so as to achieve the desired aim that is that our students would communicate in English.

When I refer to planning I mean, as Tessa Woodward (2001) says “everything the teacher does when she SAYS she is planning”. And it is true because planning is not just writing down an endless list of activities to be fulfilled during classes but, for example, observing the learners while they are working, choosing between sequences of activities even when we are forced to improvise and mainly considering the things done during the classes to learn from our mistakes or our successes of course!

Here 4 main aspects, I have become convinced planning is essential!

Time management: planning helps, in a way, to foresee the time we will devote to each task taking into account our students’ capacities and characteristics.

Fluency of activities: thinking forward, we can scaffold the activities students will do and there can be a coherent connection between one and the other.

Metacognitive issues: if we plan, we can include some minutes for the students to use upper higher thinking skills to understand and analyze their learning process.

History: having written evidence of what students have done helps the teacher to consider what steps the learners have followed, have achieved, need reinforcement, etc.

 Finally!!!!!

All the subjects I have sat for. Only Practicas is missing!