PROGRAM SUMMARY
When I arrive in the US my expectations were high…concerning
1) Community work carried out by teenagers and 2) Teaching and how to improve my practice in this technological era.
Below I describe my main impressions and learning so far:
11)
Community work and leadership:
What I learned….
I came with the clear idea of what I wanted from this program. Improve my
leadership skills in order to foster real changes in my community and high
school, involving large numbers of people under the same project/s.
To tell you the truth, I didn’t learn much in the fieldwork
concerning community work and leadership.
But I got to learn from Beverly
Woody…
The most important thing to bear in mind when working with
groups is to have moral purposes, which would serve as a source of motivation
for the individuals to take part in a project. Such moral purpose implies considering the way people think and feel,
listening to everyone and making explicit how all the people are valuable for
the organization. Therefore, though
changes may be perceived as challenging or hard to achieve, the relationships
we build is what will actually make projects succeed in the long term.
2 2) Teaching
a-
From
my partner teacher,
Dana Garcia,
I got tons of lesson plans and ways of
teaching different subjects. She let me enter her account as a Fairfax County
school teacher and I downloaded everything I could. I will study all this
material more in detail at home, and share it with my colleagues from different
subjects.
b -
Technology: During fieldwork and the visit to
Gunston I learnt how to use some clues related to the use of technology in the
classroom. I will integrate some of them in my teaching in Uruguay… For
instance:
I have the knowledge on how to use some teaching web sites,
like “newsela” and “kahoot”. I even had the chance to use Kahoot during the
presentation of my country I did at Westfield’s highschool…I realized that when
using Kahoot, the students get extremely motivated, while the teacher gets
important assessment information concerning the content being assessed.
I also learned how to use the app “pinnic” at Gunston.
At Westfield I also learned from several teachers there, how
to be effective when teaching with the projector. I even bought a projector
last week and once at home I will show my colleagues how to use such
resources…I am also going to foster the idea of getting projectors for the
highschool. Many times we don’t know how to use the resources we have, but with
the right knowledge we must be able to use them wisely.
In the technology class with Dawn and Priscila we learned about piktochart, audacity and
how to face teaching using technology, based on problem solving activities, and
following the DEAPR approach.
In the learning students with disability class with Anya Evmenova we were also provided
with several web links concerning multiple learning styles I will study more in
depth with my colleagues, once I arrive in my country. And most importantly, we
learned how to create our own interactive activities just using powerpoint !!
And last, but not least, we were instructed on how to use
google docs… powerful tool to foster collaborative work among the students !!
c- Emotions in the classroom.
Sometimes we learn things that are not part of specific
instruction, and most of the time such implicit teaching tends to be more
important than the intended one. I like to observe what other teachers do and
found out something really interesting about Supryia Baily. She tends to dedicate the first 15 minutes of her
lessons to care about how we are feeling and what we think about any issue.
From such apparently unplanned situations we usually ended up beginning the
lessons…in a very smooth way, willing to share and to work.
This tells a lot about the role of emotions in the
classroom. I believe they are the most important variable to consider when
teaching; but learning how they were considered by Supryia, I realize that I
have to devote more time to listening to the students personal interests and
lives.
Beverly also
likes to listen…so this not an isolated concept; it’s full of profound meaning.
d- Teaching through games
You can hear about how powerful games can be in the
classroom, but using them properly and in a regular basis is a challenge. In April Mattix lessons we learned about
how to use different games to tackle different teaching skills. Motivating
students is the art of making them become interested in what we want them to
learn.
What do we take back home from Mattix classes?
Specific games to teach vocabulary, like examples and non examples, giving
students different drawings and making them look for their opposites, asking
questions to their classmates.
Games to work on writing, such as picture book stories
Even games for assessment, like the one we worked with last Tuesday in
which the students would be in charge of creating the assessing criteria, or
the drawing chart meant to summarize what the students learned just by choosing
a color, a symbol and an image.
I really feel that I have absorbed a lot during the program,
from the professors and also from my TEA fellows.
And now, time for departure is approaching…
