Challenges of my professional development

CHALLENGES OF MY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Алексеева Ольга Александровна

Учитель английского языка

МБОУ «СОШ № 26»

Once in my life I have seen a monument devoted to teachers, it was in Prague in 2012. Of course working with children is not an easy task. This seems to be a notion shared by teachers all over the world. The truth is that teaching English as a foreign language to teens has never been easy too.

Every autumn, after a summer holidays, I back to school and it brings me a kind of excitement. I meet with my colleagues, plan my school calendar, arrange my classroom, but all of these activities are ordinary and don’t make me happy. Only one thing is essential for me and makes me really happy smiling students in the hallways and classrooms of my school! They are ready to start working with me!

All of us who have the opportunity to teach children know how difficult to plan and present effective content lesson and make students learn English. Interesting lessons is the first aim in my job. And also very important for me is being explicit about what I expect our students to take away from my lessons. The importance of being explicit means to demonstrate a variety of language teaching strategies in my class. I incorporate visual aids and a variety of graphic organizers, scaffold listening activities and opportunities for group work, a variety of jigsaw activities to teach vocabulary and reading, models for student assignments, and peer feedback, checklists, and opportunities for drafting.

Every profession has a set of essential tools for carrying out its work. Airplane mechanics cannot repair engines without sophisticated diagnostics, wrenches and pliers. Surgeons cannot operate without scalpels and clamps. What about teaching? What tools should be used in my profession? Chalk? Blackboard? Visual aids? I don’t think so. The first tool that teachers must work with is their enthusiasm! An enthusiastic teacher is hard to resist and except in the presence of very adverse additional factors will generate a responsive enthusiasm in his class. But first of all the personality of the teacher! The “signals” that the teacher sends out are what the students use as their measure of his personality, his attitude to teaching, to students as people, to individual learning problems, to his materials. Here are some suggestions: 1) Eye contact. It is extremely important to make good eye contact with each student in the class. 2) Posture. Always hold your body so that you look alert: an erect posture, no slumping or sagging. 3) Arms and hands. Use your arms and hands when you talk, to emphasize a point, describe a shape, a movement. 4) Face. Facial expression is very important. Make your face expressive when you talking. Don’t let your facial muscles sag, don’t look bored.

Try to remember that your “body language” tells your students a lot about you, your attitude to what you are doing: if your body tells them you are enthusiastic about your job and carrying about them, they will respond positively; if your body sends out “negative vibes” they will respond negatively. As for me, I always remember about it and it helps me in my job.