Philosophy of Teaching

By Katherine Frey

My purpose is to equip students with the tools they need to experience, participate in and learn from French and Francophone (French-speaking) language, culture and communication. I teach to open students eyes to seeing the world from the perspectives of other peoples and cultures; and to look beyond themselves to reach out to people of other ideas, beliefs, cultures, backgrounds etc. and establish communication based upon a common plane. I teach to encourage students communication abilities and self-expression as they grow into young adults. I teach to impact students lives by being a resource of encouragement, challenge, integrity, dependability, and compassion. I teach so that the future of the United States will have the ability to communicate, negotiate, and problem-solve with other world citizens.

My objective is to teach language in meaningful and experiential contexts. I expect student learning to occur as they use the language in contextual situations of writing, reading, and speaking. For example, to teach items one might find at a store vocabulary, I would use real objects with signs and prices, assign students a scenario, such as a study abroad in Quebec, a price limit, and an activity where they walk through the store, create a list of the objects they will buy, calculate the prices, and compare their lists with their classmates. I believe in using communicative methods to teach language, where students are creating meaning from seeing and hearing the language instead of direct instruction where they are told everything and expected to just absorb. I use many activities

involving group and partner interactive work to encourage authentic interaction and communication. This promotes a classroom community and fosters student growth in working well with others. I also believe in cultivating students sense of self and others, in contrasting and comparing languages, cultures, beliefs, and ideas.

I design lesson plans and activities to target multiple learning styles. For visual-spatial learners, I incorporate authentic visual sources such as Francophone multimedia (web pages, newscasts, YouTube videos, music videos, films) as well as photographs, cartoons, and tangible francophone artifacts into the lessons. For bodily-kinesthetic learners, I design many activities that involve movement to different stations of the room or to speak with different classmates. Additionally, I provide artifacts that can be touched or used. Students also have the opportunity to role-play. Using scenarios where they must create dialogues or spontaneously negotiate certain situations together provides them the ability to learn. For musical learners, I include activities in students classroom activities and outside work where they examine lyrics and listen to authentic Francophone music for specific elements such as themes, idiomatic expressions, imagery, language construction, etc. There are activities designed for work with others to target interpersonal learners, as well as individual activities for those who absorb more through intrapersonal learning. Linguistic learners thrive with activities that focus more upon the words and structure of the language, such as reading fables, poems, Francophone blogs and websites to learn new words and structures in context. To target both the linguistic and

logical-mathematical learners, activities are designed that provide a context, such as a fictional or non-fictional writing piece, that first asks them to understand, and then asks them to pull apart and examine the structures and the words that create this understanding.

I measure my effectiveness through self-reflection, student evaluation, student feedback, and administration/colleague feedback. After each of my lessons, I reflect upon the activities, the successes made, the elements that need small changes, and upon the ways I would completely re-create an activity. I will write on my lesson plans, making notes of what worked, what did not, and what I would change which influences my lesson planning for the future. I have filmed a few of my lessons and written reflections based upon them. I also measure my effectiveness using my students as an important indicator. Through formative assessments such as listening to their speaking, reading their writing, giving them listening comprehension activities, I can gauge their progress and when I need to provide more clarification and more scaffolding. Additionally, looking at their summative assessments such as quizzes, tests, and projects allows me to see what they have taken away at the end of each unit. Furthermore, I ask students for feedback, to tell me the activities they found helpful, what they struggled with, and to reflect upon their own learning. Lastly, I ask administrators and colleagues to observe my classes and to offer their feedback. I use this feedback to look at new aspects I may not have seen or considered before. I appreciate feedback and suggestions and seek them out in order that I may grow using the wisdom and experience of all of the rich resources around me.

In conclusion, I teach to impact students ability to understand and communicate with all people and realize their responsibilities as world citizens. I accomplish this by a combination of designing contextual-based lesson based upon authenticity and different student learning styles. I seek to grow by learning from the feedback resources around me, as well as continuing my own research upon the profession of teaching and the French language and cultures.