When teaching English as a foreign language, you have problems or reflections. Choose one option to write about it.
Option #1: Examining a “Problem of Practice”
“Problems of practice” occur regularly in teaching. These “problems” are difficult and reoccurring classroom situations that have no “ideal” solution. Magdalena Lampert, for instance, describes recurring times in her mathematics classroom where she has to choose a course of action, usually in the moment—trying to accommodate individual needs while also weighing the effects on the class as a whole (Lampert, 2001). Yet, frustrating as they may feel, “problems of practice” are also opportunities for learning to become a better teacher. In your professional essay, please examine a “problem of practice” that you have encountered directly in your teaching or observed during your teacher preparation fieldwork or internship. Use the following as a guide for structuring your essay:
(1) Describe a “problem of practice” you encountered or observed. Provide as detailed an account as possible with examples to illustrate the problem. (Please do not use actual names of students, teachers, administrators, etc.).
(2) Since problems of practice can be opportunities for learning, both in the short run and for the longer term, what did you learn right away from the problem you described, and what does that problem indicate you might need to learn as a teacher in the longer run? Why?
Option #2: Deepening One’s Understanding of Subject Matter Content
Understanding the discipline and the content that one teaches is an important ingredient of teaching. While teachers learn much subject matter knowledge through content course work and teacher education courses, there is a great deal 5
about content that teachers learn in preparation for and even in the midst of teaching it to students. In fact, many teachers often state that they did not really understand particular content until they had to teach it to their students. Use the following as a guide for structuring your essay:
(1) Describe in detail, and with examples, a teaching experience in the classroom, tutoring, or as a classroom assistant you have had in which you found yourself re-learning, understanding more deeply, or questioning the depth of your understanding about a particular concept or big idea in what you have taught to students.
(2) Write about the lessons that you took away from this experience about yourself as a teacher and about the intellectual work that is involved in teaching subject matter to students.