Using My Strengths in My Teaching

Wikipedia defines Intelligence in many different ways such as in terms of one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving. Or simply one would prefer defining intelligence as the ability to learn to deal with new situations.

Learning to deal with new situations in my case would be so pervasive in that, I would distinctively consider personal variations and varied ethnicities, cultures and communities to guarantee comprehensive learning environments that would permit every learner to meet high expectations to feel that their strength in the class have been given maximum attention. In so doing, I would be able to acknowledge and make responses to my own feelings and that of the learners in the classroom in order to make both parties more effective in their duties.

Here is a case where students now become bored in the class or have lost hope in completing an assignment (which is a common phenomenon); this is where I will use Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory which will likely help eliminate such boredom and frustrations in the class by simply incorporating more than one just type of intelligence into the teaching learning process.

The best way to know the learners’ level of intelligence is to provide a personalized learning plan and the personalized consideration that makes a big difference in how students view the subject. In so doing you would have had the pleasance of helping several of such learners realize their own strength and observe their position and scores in class improve. Therefore, the focus of the teacher here shouldn’t be simply to get the solution for the learners but instead his/her main focus is to provide the path leading to the solution to permit the him/her identify gaps in them and set a plan on how to fill such gaps for the success of the learners.

How Was It For You?

First of all successful teachers have realized and experienced that conduct issues are somewhat  not common in classrooms where learners are positively involved and concerned, and in which the learners are valued for exactly who they are with or without disabilities in them, where they come from and what they can play a role to the others.

Therefore, one of the best ways in which I create experiences in my class room is first to get to know the background of my students to be able to predict and understand some of the non academic issues like societal problems that might be impacted positively or negatively on their behavioral growth, development, participation and learning.

It is also imperative for me to know that not all of them learn and appreciate learning at the same time, there are others who understand on the first day you present to them the lesson, others will appreciate it the following day and others take as long as a week.  The main goal to me always remain to educate the individual as a whole by taking into consideration and allowing for individual differences in the development and learning process in the classroom.

It is also important to me to focus on the environment created in the classroom and whether it engages all learners effectively and meaningfully in the class. The teaching methods used in the class can influence learner’s development in a way that promotes teacher learning interactions which is an integral part in managing the class and planning well for classroom activities.

I think it is also important to decide on the sitting arrangement in the class if real learning experience is to be achieved. Ya! It may look unnecessary but it’s not because when students are well arranged in the class it automatically disables some kind of certain individual interactions that may seem to distract the class attention as well as impacting some uncalled behavior and attitudes of students. Therefore, I believe it is essential for the teacher to decide which student sits where and during which kind of activity in the class.

Experiences of True Learning

The following are some of the lessons learnt from Sylvia’s video:

(i)                 The simplest way and the best way Sylvia did was to utter some words trying to speak it amidst no fear of making errors.

(ii)               She tried to speak it with other good speaking buddies and this became the most successful method for her.

(iii)             Most of the work was done by her; she ensured that she was not left behind in any aspect of learning.

(iv)             Most of her learning took place through conversations and making comparisons between some English and French words.

My Personal Experience

It was in this ccti course, at the beginning I didn’t attend the first induction workshop on how to start the whole stuff, but when Geoffrey informed me that the course had kicked start, I thought it was not going to be possible for me to make it through, however, he encouraged me that, things were not going to be difficult.

I simply took my first lesson by browsing all through the modules and trying to discover what it had contained and I thought it was going to be a walk over just like a week or so. But I will tell you that in less than a day I received an email that the duration for lesson 1.3 had already passed when I had not begun anything! Then on contacting Geoffrey, he confirmed it and there were no option apart from starting.

The following day, after carefully studying the whole process, I finally got to start my lesson 1.1 and I found that it was moving well then 1.2 then again 1.3 and finally found myself at par with colleagues at 1.4. However, where I got stuck, I could call him on phone especially at the time I was creating my blog.

Now here comes the time for the final assignment where schools, colleges were busy either concluding the end of year examinations or making reports, people at home were preparing to go upcountry to make annual visits and the email had messages indicating 20^th as the final day for the submission of the assignment. Thank God, amidst all these, I submitted my assignment on that day at 4pm in the evening and straight away went for a cup of tea.

Course 1 was so amazing and I would now want to discover how course 2 would be!