WORKSHOP #7 - Becoming a reflective teacher

On June 6th, Luciana Moura Colucci de Camargo talked to us about the importance of being a reflective teacher. Luciana teaches English and Literature at UFTM. Unfortunately I was absent, as I was on our second immersion. However, I took some time to reflect over my short English Teaching experience. I have been a teacher for over 8 years now and I have taught all ages, from 8 year-old "adults" to 70 year-old "kids". I don't really see myself as teacher now. I feel I'm somebody who teaches, not a teacher yet. I'm working on it. I still have a long road ahead if I want to become a good teacher, but for now, I humbly accept my limitations. And when I say I accept my limitations I mean I still have to grow a lot as a human being and as a professional to be considered a good teacher. Exercising this ability to reflect over our practices can be very useful in order to keep up a good job or to change something that hasn't been working very well. During her speech, Luciana said that "teaching is learning twice." I believe she missed some "times", cause teaching is learning a thousand times. I usually say, and I mean it, that we learn much more when we become teachers than when we are only students.

Luciana tried - and I guess she made it - to show how important it is to frequently re-think our behavior, ideas and specially beliefs, when it comes to English Teaching. We then listened to"The Wall - Pink Floyd" and and she suggested we watched "The Emperor's Club" which is an excellent movie about teaching. Both references address us to the real role of a teacher in our society nowadays: we must not only teach them into a competence, we must also sponsor and support the birth of a real man or woman, a human being. These ideas led me to another interesting reference for that: another famous movie called "The Dead Poet's Society". As in "The Emperor's Club", here we have an example of how teachers sometimes go beyond the simple task of giving students information, reaching their hearts and minds. Certainly, this is the kind of teacher I want to be: not a role model, nor a master, but an inspiration!!!

WORKSHOP #6 - Lesson planing management

On April 30th, Mr. Ivan Marcos Ribeiro, a teacher at UFU, lectured about lesson planing. He first asked a question that seems easy to answer but carries a lot of hidden ideas: What is a lesson? I laughed at it when he asked cause I had this superficial view of it. I couldn't see it as deep as he could. But then, as we talked about it, I realized that a class involves much more than the triad student-book-teacher. Mr. Ribeiro made his point by showing us some features classes have. Accordingo to him, classes are an easy to recognize series of teaching and learning activities, which have a particular setting, different from speech activities. These simple definitions of a class's features show a lot about class planing. Mr. Ribeiro also compared classes with several different activities, such as a wedding, a soccer match, climbing a mountain or conducing an orchestra. Then he asked important questions about lesson planing: how long before class do you prepare it? Do you make class notes? What do you write on your notes? I guess these questions were asked only to open our eyes to important aspects of teaching we were unaware of. When we are students learning to be teachers, we sometimes feel insecure before teaching and then we tend to "stick to the book". Answering Mr. Ribeiro's questions and reflecting over his ideas made me realize there is a lot more about teaching and preparing a class than I could ever imagine!

WORKSHOP #5 - Using technology in and beyond the language classroom

On May 9th and 16th our attentions were drawn to technology. Mrs. Maria Nilce Pontes Martinelli, owner of Cultura Inglesa - Uberaba, talked to us about the usage of technology in and beyond the classroom. We had two excellent meetings with Mrs. Martinelli, where we discussed the benefits of technology applied to language acquisition. She first provided an outlook of what there is avaliable on and offline regarding education and information technology. We talked about blogs, wikis, voice and text chat, podcasting, e-boards and their effects on our students and the results achieved so far. At the end of her first workshop (April, 9th) se left us with 5 questions:

1- Does using text/voice chat with learners improve their English?
2- What kind of English should learners use in chat ?
3- What technical skills do teachers/learners need to be able to use in chat?
4- What benefits does the use of chat bring to the classroom?
5- Is it better to use text or voice chat with language?

Next, on April 16th, Mrs. Martinelli took us to Cultura Inglesa, where we were shown the e-board. The e-board is an interactive board, which works just like a computer. The board is just like a computer screen, and there is a special pen to operate it, that works like a mouse. We could see an effective learning tool in practice and how it works, though we didn't get to use it. The benefits and usages for such tool are potentially limitless, however, it is utopic to think that these new technological gadgets will be made readily avaliable for all students. It's nothing more than an ideal future to dream about. Nevertheless, working with an e-board was an unique experience for me and I hope to work with it again soon.

WORKSHOP #4 - Language and Culture

On April 25th, Mrs. Maria das Graças Miranda, a teacher at Colégio Cenecista Dr. José Ferreira brainstormed with us over Language and Culture. She proposed an overview of the methodologies for English Language Teaching since English started to be taught in Brazil. It was interesting to know how it was done. We were able to see the evolution of the methods and materials used to help a student acquire a second language. She proposed old-fashioned exercises and activities as an example of what we were discussing, and it gave us an idea of what it was like to teach some years ago. She even showed us an old book so we could compare it to the ones we use today.
Undoubtedly, books nowadays are better than in the past, however, it doesn't make old books ineffective or useless. People used to learn with it, and if they still had to use these books, I believe they would learn again. This workshop made me think: the point is not only the book you use, nor the methodology you stand for, neither the attention you have to your students. The point is how in tune are your strategies with your students? No matter what you do, make sure it corresponds to your students expectations and lives.
I love history and I believe that the answers for our future questions lies in our past. We always have to look back for examples and experiences in order to build today the strcutures we want for our futures. Therefore, understanding the cultural conexions between english language and its students in the past and nowadays is a key action towards an effective and successful english language practice.

WORKSHOP #3 - Oral, writing and pronunciation development

On April 18th we met Mrs. Leila Janice Maxwell, who is a teacher at UNIUBE. She talked to us about relevant topics, such as pronunciation and oral practice. During the whole afternoon, Mrs. Maxwell guided us through a myriad of interesting exercises which where focused on pronunciation and oral practice. We had loads of fun with some games she proposed in class. We talked about phonetic symbols and how important it is to understand them. In another important part of the workshop, Mrs. Maxwell showed us how different is the oral speech from the written one. This sentence may sound obvious, but there is a lot more about oral practice that we know of. As we could see when she asked us to sing along one of those "song twisters"(songs tha will twist your tongue, I bet!).
By the way, would you like to try these tongue twisters?

- Six sick slick slim sycamore saplings.
- A box of biscuits, a batch of mixed biscuits
- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?