Pamela’s Box

 Question1.  Which of these approaches do you hope will have more influence on your teaching in the future?    

  After I saw this question, I recalled my experience of learning English. When I was a senior high student, I met a great English teacher. Although I consider she as a “great” one, that doesn’t mean she is really good at “teaching”. Because I don’t remember how she taught me grammar, vocabulary, or anything else in class, but I will never forget that we had exchanged the diary almost every single day. That’s a quite memorable time!    

  And I did learn much from the process, at least I started to express myself in English. No matter how many mistakes I made or how many Chinese I used in the diary , her first respond was always about what I deliver, and then taught me how in a correct way with English gradually.    

  As the experience I mentioned I seem to hope Affective humanistic can be more influential in my future, and then want to do the same way just likes what my teacher has done. But I think that each of the ten approaches has its advantages. That’s why we have to know all of them.   So my complete answer should like following words.   “I hope Affective humanistic can be the most influential in my future, but I expect that I can use all of the Teaching Approaches in different circumstances, and to every individual.” 

Question 2. What strategies will you use to make your teaching more effective and meaningful? 

  When I taught in the cram schools, there was a very naughty boy in my class. He never paid attention on his lesson or handed out the homework on time. And it would be terrible even if he handed it out.One day, I had tried all the way I could figure out to make him do his homework and write neatly, but I failed. Finally, I just let myself forget that I’m a teacher, and thought about if someone always push me to write some words I’ve never learned, what will I do?    

  That reminded me of the first time I wrote Japanese words, I always associated those strange words with some shapes, or anything could make me memorize them. So, I came to ask his sister’s help, and she told me he loves cars very much, not the model cars, is TOYOTA! So, I began to try the “TOYOTA” way on him. I just told him the size of every single letter and associated them with the cars his likes.For example, I told him that B is not so thin, B should a WISH instead of a VIOS, and he really got that, sometimes he would ask me back, “ Teacher, is G CAMRY or ARTIST?” His change increased my confidence of teaching and proved that my experience of learning Japanese is also useful!    

  After the episode happened, I think that the empathy is quite important to teaching. If we could pay our empathy on the different learners, we may understand their feeling easier and teach easier too. Afterward no matter what teaching material we used, I believe that all will be more effective, and the teaching will also be more meaningful. That will be like we pouring water in the watering pot. Just try to image that the water is “what” and “how” we want to teach, and the watering pot is our empathy.  

  So, to fill up the “empathy” watering pot with teaching material and then water the “students” plants when they need watering.  That’s the strategies I will adopt.