EIGHT TASK: Reflection on video-taped teaching performance

Usually people say you learn something new every day. Today and thanks to my own classroom observation I confirmed it. Although most of the time teachers’ lives become a routine, every day teaching gives us the opportunity to learn something new that we did not know from our students and even from ourselves. Sometimes, we just limit our labor to wake up very early in the morning, plan classes, teach different topics, check and revise notebooks, worksheets and fill many school forms. This routine does not let us to see beyond and realize that in each moment of teaching there is something or   someone from we can learn to improve our labor. Hopefully, this class observation gave me the chance to learn new things that I am sure will help me to improve my teaching practice. In this paper I briefly describe what the class was about, then I present some comments made from a colleague as well as my own points of view of the class. While doing so, I reflect on those comments by making an analysis and telling you what I learnt from them. Finally, I present a conclusion of this experience. 

To begin with, the students who were in this class are a group of 33 rural students from ninth grade. They are very nice, friendly and respectful people as you can see on the video. I have been working with them since the beginning of this year. In the video I see myself as a friendly and approachable teacher. I use my body language to help my students understand what I say and I think that I try to create a good atmosphere into the classroom and to make my students feel confident and willing to participate in the class.

 Talking about the class itself, its purpose was to make my students learn how to express in past tense. This is the topic we were studying in the last classes but this time using irregular verbs. The first activity I carried out to introduce the topic was to show them some pictures stuck on the board. I decided to do this activity to show my students some real situations that have occurred in the last days. The idea was students talked about what they knew about those situations. They did it in English and Spanish and little by little I help them to build complete sentences. I was writing those expressions on the board to make them identify how to use the verbs in past. Then, they chose a number at random in a small piece of paper to make groups. I passed each group some papers with different color words which contained ten irregular verbs with their past forms and the meaning in Spanish. So, they had to match them in the correct way. Although they did not know all of those verbs the idea was to find some patterns that let them to identify the past form. After checking these verbs, the third activity was to say and write three short sentences using some of those verbs following the samples given before on the board. Finally, based on a different picture of a situation they had to guess what had happened and write a short paragraph using the verbs that they had matched in the second activity. This last activity was not possible to do it because of the time.

After watching the video one of my colleague’s comments was about the way I made the groups. According to her it was a different and funny way that rise students’ emotion and expectancy about who they were to work with. This short time made the classroom atmosphere get better. From this part of the class and my colleagues’ comment I learnt that if we start making very little changes like the way you organize the students, it will help you to create a better classroom atmosphere allowing students feel motivated and willing to participate.

Another aspect that I realized and my colleague’s comment agreed was about the importance of group work. I implemented or try to implement this type of cooperative learning because when students work together, learning takes place in an easier way, as students help each other and learn from each other. Besides, when students work with someone else they feel more confident and relax with the activities.

In addition to this, my colleague recommended me do not use too much Spanish in class. I totally agreed with her but I also explained her that as they are rural students their English level is very low, then I usually have to speak them in Spanish. I know I should talk them more in English but when I try to do it, students become more reluctant to the class and the communication turns very limited. Also, because I have realized that when I explain them in Spanish they comprehend and learnt better how English works. Since I work with rural students one of the most important things I have learnt is that they feel more comfortable and less anxious when the English teacher tries to put aside their domain of that language and show him/herself as someone in an equal level as students are. However, I am not saying rural students are not able to have a class in English but it would be little by little. This classroom observation also helped my colleague (who has worked only with urban students) understand that rural and urban students have many differences apart from the place they live and we cannot expect from them the same responses or attitudes in the English class.

Another comment was about the lack of time to finish the planned activities. Maybe I spent too much time making the groups and at the end when the bell rang we had not time to do the last activity. I recognize this is one of the aspects I have to work on since most of the time I do not reach the time to develop what I plan. Maybe, I have to think of planning less activities or maybe to develop them faster. 

On the other hand, I have to admit this was the first time I observed one of my classes and I to be honest I did it just for the master’s assignment because I had never thought of recording a class. Why? I do not know. However, from this unusual experience I can say I learnt two more relevant things for my teaching practice. First, that the idea of being a reflective teacher should be born by heart, it should not be imposed. If we decide to reflect upon our practice is because we think it is important and significant for us. Because it is an opportunity to see, evaluate, reflect on and modify the way we teach in order to make it not only more effective but enriching and pleasant for both students and teacher.

Second, that there are many things we should do by our own (and not just to complete a requirement) to be more reflective practitioners and the video recording is a very good way to do it. I have to admit that being observed and videotaped is an estrange experience. Even though it was an uncomfortable moment, after watching and analyze the video I realized that it is a very effective technique to reflect upon our teaching practice.                                                         

To conclude I would like to say that teaching is undoubtedly a very exhausting act but the most rewarding and satisfactory. It is a perfect place to explore and learn many things that we cannot find in other settings. Sometimes we may have difficulties; we may feel disappointed because we cannot achieve what we want, however, our commitment to students and ourselves has to be greater and stronger to overcome all those difficulties faced along the way and to do so, video recording is an excellent tool to help us reflect on those aspects in order to improve our teaching practice.

****** Excuse me professor I couldn't upload the video. It is too long and heavy and the system didn't allow me to upload it.