Teaching Philosophy of the English Language Teacher

Teaching philosophy is an important statement for a teacher to create a clear portrait of their personality as a teacher. Every teacher has to write philosophy on how, what, and why they want to teach. This essay will introduce a teaching philosophy as English language teacher.

Teaching Philosophy

I believe that all students have different needs and expectations from education/school. Students in my class should leave school wanting to learn more. All children are unique and need a stimulating environment in class where they can grow mentally, emotionally and socially. As a teacher, my ambition is to create an environment where students can meet their full potential. Further, my wish is to provide a safe classroom where students can share their ideas and challenge themselves. According to Upper Secondary Curriculum, teachers should “take as the starting point each individual student’s needs, circumstances, experiences and thinking” (Natl. Ag. f. Ed.). All children are unique and have a different way of thinking and different needs. I believe that as a teacher it is essential to consider these aspects when creating lesson plans or strategies.

In every class, there will be students that will experience difficulties and need support. The Upper Secondary Curriculum states that teachers should “stimulate, guide and support students and provide special support to students experiencing difficulties” (Natl. Ag. f. Ed.). The teacher’s role should always be a supporting role. My aim as a teacher is to acknowledge the difficulties my students experience and create a well-balanced study material and tasks to help my students improve. Every classroom is unique; my role as a teacher will be to assist each student in developing their potential and learning styles. I will present a strategy where I will integrate different learning styles, as well as creating content relevant to students’ study profile/program. In my literature strategy, I will include projects, themes, cooperative learning, individual projects, and hands-on activities. I believe that students need a variety in the studies to be able to expand their knowledge and grow. I want to bring an open mind and a positive attitude. Furthermore, I will bring my expectations high to the classroom each day. I believe that by bringing consistency, diligence and warmth to my job that ultimately, I will inspire and encourage these traits in my students as well.

The Upper Secondary Curriculum stated that teachers should “reinforce each student’s self-confidence, as well as their willingness and ability to learn” (Natl. Ag. f. Ed.). I believe that a classroom should be a safe and caring environment where children are free to speak their minds and grow. I will use strategies to ensure my teaching strategies will help their willingness to learn, like positive vs. negative discipline, classroom activities, and problem-solving skills. I believe that by bringing discipline and group activities will bring my students closer to each other as well as help them grow and flourish in a safe environment.

What? How? Why?

My strong belief is that teaching classical literature is a strong foundation in literary studies. Without a strong foundation, it is almost impossible to cover literary studies without feeling overwhelmed. “The field of education in general, and of literary education in particular, is politically and theoretically charged” (Beach et al., 4). According to this statement, there are a lot of aspects to think about when choosing the right literature for students. Choosing the right literature to cover is a challenge for every teacher. Although taking into consideration classical literature from modernism, it can provide a helpful guideline to choose the right literature. Through well adapted classical literature a teacher can choose the right modern literature for their students according to their likes and dislikes. According to Upper Secondary Curriculum, “ensure that the teaching in terms of content and its organization is typified by a gender perspective” (Natl. Ag. f. Ed.). The choices that I have to make in choosing literature I have to consider gender studies in today’s society. Young minds are consistently involved in social issues in today’s society. In other words, as an educator, I have to consider their beliefs and raising questions to adapt proper literature to help my students learn and grow.

Every teacher has to make decisions about how to advance student learning. Beach says that these decisions are based on the beliefs on ‘what works’, and what we believe works. Beach means that these decisions reflect the teachers’ thoughts on what is important in teaching literature. The choices that we make, as educators, reflect our knowledge about the theories and our beliefs about teaching literature. My strong belief is to help my students to develop an interest in literature, not just send them to university and prepare them for future studies. But to help them grow and show them that reading literature could expand their general knowledge, expand their vocabulary, think critically and become more educated on everyday matters.

Introducing literature to today’s youth is not a simple task. Youth in today’s society have limited patience and are often busy with updating their Instagram accounts. As a new teacher, I will have high expectations. When coming into the classroom, my head is filled with ideas, theories I have learned in university. As an ambitious teacher, I would like to use this knowledge to my students. The reality in schools look different, teachers have to adjust to the students’ needs, abilities and difficulties. As a good teacher, I need to acknowledge these aspects and choose the right teaching method to achieve the expected results. In order to get the results, my strategy is to present the chosen piece of literature in shorter parts. The students will be able to familiarize themselves with the text. After each part of the text, the class will discuss the text together with the teacher. The reason for reading texts in this manner is to be able to go through the text and discuss the potential difficulties with the language or unfamiliar vocabulary. Each session with the text will require students to take notes. In addition, the students will be provided with shorter activities to complete after they have read the shorter part of the book.

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A different approach to spark interest in desired literature is to provide the students with a visual presentation of the piece of literature. Visual presentations can take in shorter clips, movies or even graphic novels.

Literature Texts

Octavia’s Butler novel ‘Kindred’ is an engaging text for students; the narrative structure (first person) and ethical dilemmas make a close experience of the novel, very accessible for students. In order to build on a traditional Reader Response textual analysis, students can be encouraged to examine ‘Kindred’ for its’ postmodern structure. The novel provides an opportunity to explore the slave narrative (even fiction), or to examine the text through the Postcolonial Theory. Octavia Butler has found an ingenious way to tell a story about slavery with a modern voice. According to the Syllabus, the students should have “the ability to discuss and reflect on living conditions, social issues and cultural features in a different context and parts of the world where English is used” (Natl. Ag. f. Ed.). ‘Kindred’ is a perfect illustration of these aspects. The students will have the opportunity to discuss important topics like slavery and racism and the ability to respond to them in their own words. According to Parker, “racial studies have influenced literary studies by inviting readers to expand beyond the traditional range of white-written works and to read race in nonessentialist ways”. In other words, Kindred, that is told by a black woman, invites the opportunity to study race in a non-white-written narrative. ‘Kindred’ provides an opportunity to exercise creative writing in the form of Fanfiction. The teacher can allow the students to choose any moments from the story they think is important or interesting and challenge them to write their own stories.

Alice Sebold’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ is an intense read for students about rape and murder. However, the story is focused on the ethereal imagery and surrealism of Alice Sebold’s portrayal of heaven. Further, the author invites the reader to consider how valuable life is and how it truly means to move on from a tragedy. The opportunities for a teacher working with this particular story are wide. The first aspect that teachers should consider is to ask students to compare and contrast how the murder case is handled in the book’s setting (the 1970’s) and how it would be investigated today. The novel also invites the opportunity to study the theory of psychoanalysis. Although this theory is fairly new in literary studies, it focuses its’ theory on the characters and their minds. According to the theory of psychoanalysis, characters in a novel or film could be considered as real people (Parker, 124). Furthermore, Parker says that “the distinction between and people often proves challenging when readers first hear of it. Some readers consciously choose to think of characters as people, because that is how the readers engage in reading. Although, the theory suggests that characters are not real people, characters in a novel or film exist only in that film or on a page of that novel” (Parker, 124). Presenting ‘The Lovely Bones’ to students raises an opportunity to go outside the box and ask the students to place themselves as objective observers of the story. This approach allows the students to no sympathize with the character but to become observants or critics.

Teaching Literature to Adolescents

The article about how to teach literature poses questions on how teachers can teach literature to younger people having in mind the important aspects of teaching theories. As a teacher, it is important to think about how to plan your lessons, select right texts, planning response lessons, formulating written assignments, evaluating students, etc. Beach says that “you will ultimately need to formulate your own sense of purpose and theories of teaching literature”. As a beginner teacher, it is almost impossible to create a bulletproof strategy where you can include everything acquired in university. The strategy to create a good plan for the classroom is to learn by successes and mistakes. Every plan and strategy can change according to the students’ needs or difficulties.

Beach says that “The field of education in general, and of literary education in particular, is politically and theoretically charged”. Although it may difficult to adjust to the standards of teaching theories, syllabus or curriculum, this information is for teachers to use and reflect upon. I believe that these theories and debates are a solid foundation for teachers to help them choose the right material for their classes.

The article ‘Teaching Literature to Adolescents’ Beach describes transmission theories. “Transmission theories frame learning in terms of acquiring facts and knowledge bout literature” (Beach, 5). In other words, this theory suggests that the primary focus of teaching literature should consider only just the crucial aspects of literature. Furthermore, transmission theories suggest that the students could just learn, for example, what is the first- or third-person perspective. Beach proposes a problem with this theory “simply having knowledge about literature – for example, knowing the difference between metaphor and simile – doesn’t necessarily mean that students know how to insightfully interpret literature or that they have made meaningful connections to what they have read”. Acknowledging this, I believe that the students need to know how to use these terms in order to actually learn something. The transmission model proposes simple and vague explorations and interpretations of literary texts.

Conclusion

My future as a teacher involves double roles. For the first part, I am a private person with dreams, thoughts, and hopes for life. I am also a teacher who has the idea of how I want to be as a teacher and my reflections about teaching.

I believe that all children have the right to learn. All students are unique and have different approaches in studying. My role as a teacher is to be their leader and a guide. From my own experiences, downfalls, and accomplishments, I want to be able to guide my students to the right decisions. Nevertheless, I am a beginner teacher and still create my own identity as a language teacher. All students are unique and have something different to bring to their own education. As a good teacher, I need to able to help them to express themselves and accept themselves for who they are, as well as accept the differences of others.

Works Cited

1. Beach, Richard, et al. Teaching Literature to Adolescents. 3. ed., Routledge, 2016.
2. Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. Third ed., Oxford University Press, 2014.
3. Nation Agency of Education. English Syllabi. Upper Secondary School. Skolverket.
4. Nation Agency of Education. Curriculum for the upper secondary school. Skolverket.