Teachers’ Attitude

Throughout time people have been interested in giving definition to all things humans being developed, found or create during live. As well the word attitude had not been an exception. The word attitude is defined as a subjective or mental preparation for action. Attitude means the individual's prevailing tendency to respond favorably or unfavorably to an object (person or group of people, institutions or events). As we have learned the teacher’s role is very important in the learning process, the teacher has to catch the learners’ attention, but not all the teachers are being successful in this because all depends on the teacher’s attitude. Attitudes determine what each individual will see, hear, think and do. If the teacher has a positive attitude he or she will believe and act as if all students will be successful in class. If a professor has a positive attitude there are no losers in the classroom. Students will live up to the teacher´s expectations. There are many factors to consider in order becoming a good teacher, but the most effectives are when teachers demonstrate caring and kindness, share responsibility and encourage creativity.

After working aall day in different subjects, students will find it hard to concentrate learning a new language in the English class, so they need passionate teachers to make things fun demonstrating care and kindness. Those are the kind of teachers students love and still remember from school until now. The effective teachers who shared emotions and feelings such us enthusiasm, affection, patience, sadness or disapproval as well as a sincere interest and care about their students are the successful ones and last in students mine forever. ....., those teachers are the ones who now that they can obtain the results they really want from their students.

 In like manner, sharing responsibility focuses on the ability of the teacher to establish a shared environment.The teacher candidates emphasized that an effective teacher must not be overly possessive or need complete control of the children and environment. It is important to allow students both responsibility and freedom within the classroom community. Comments were also shared that both the teachers and students need to contribute to the learning environment for a relationship of looseness and acceptance to develop. That is why communication is also valuable in the process and feelings can be openly expressed by both the children and teachers.

Likewise, encouraging creativity will combine perfectly on the most important aspects of teacher’s attitude in order to increase student´s self-esteem. This attitude stresses the importance of stimulating the students’ creativity. Teacher candidates talked about teachers who listened to their ideas and suggestions for lessons and activities. The effective teachers were open to students’ ways of being imaginative and also utilized many approaches of learning. The students appreciated and were personally motivated when teachers designed lessons that considered their interests, skills, and needs.

In addition, teachers must able to accept individuals as they are,  understand that students come from varying backgrounds that have much to do with who they are and how they behave. They do not judge and they are not constantly to exert oppression by how students behave. They seem to welcome diversity as a natural consequence of being human. Their objective is not so much to change students as it is to encourage students to comply with rules for their own good and the good of the class. The acceptance permits that teachers works individually with students, because they respect individual learning styles. They accept the student where he is and are able to offer help to for him to advance.

Finally, the motivation is one of the important aspects in the acquisition of a language. Motivation is a kind of desire for learning. It is very difficult to teach a language in a learning environment if the learner does not have a desire to learn a language. We are human beings and we will always have problems in our job, family, friends, etc. The real problem is bridging to the class and blow off steam with the students.

Reaction Paper Concerning Defining Educational Innovations

The meaning of innovation thus relates to renewal or improvement, with novelty being a consequence of this improvement. For an improvement to take place it is necessary for people to change the way they make decisions, or make choices outside of their norm.  A famous phrase said: “innovation changes the values onto which the system is based”. In others words when people change their value system, the old (economic) system will change to make room for the better one. For example one important tool for innovate in class is the technology. The advantage of incorporating technology into the school curriculum and the classroom is good because you can found a lot of information and different activities online, but the disadvantage is that not all the educative centers have access to this tool. However not only with the use of technology a teacher can innovate the class. Educational innovation is offer new ideas that we have to take into account to develop our class. The teacher has to be creative and in this way to make a success work with the materials that she or he has.

Nowadays, the field of English has an important tool in terms of innovations. The British Council is a center in which we can access and take some didactic plans, ideas, materials, links, etc. On the other hand, this organization develops projects about how to improve the English Language evaluations, teacher formations, and curriculum design, trying to implement those programs in underdeveloped countries. However, it is important take into account the socio-cultural aspect. Not all countries are equals, for that reason those programs are development different depending on the area, raze, customs. 

This approach was first developed in USA; it was a method of EFL teaching in that place. The natural approach meets the needs from beginner’s and intermediate language learners. It is precisely with Krashen’s theory that is about monitor.

There are five different hypotheses for monitor theory:

1.      The acquisition: This hypothesis suggests that through the stimulation of two different systems adults can acquired a second language, the first system is involving subconscious learning process and the second is about development formal consciousness knowledge.

2.       This is about how could be used the theory, it could be used just to monitor output. Having enough time, being focused on form and knowing the grammatical rule is so important to have a good result from this theory.

3.      This hypotheses is based on the learners input that learners acquired from sintax and vocabulary.

4.      This hypothesis suggests that exist an order or structure to develop the acquisition of the target language, this is natural and predictable.

5.      This states the different circumstances or mood that can obstruct the learning acquisition, for example: self-esteem, anxiety, social distance.

The natural approach recommends that (1) language classrooms should stimulate communication in the target language rather than focus on its structure.

The procedural syllabus

This syllabus began with an experimental English Language teaching project that was for primary and secondary schools because of unhappiness with the status in English subject.

There are three features in which the analytic approach was innovative. It was not linguistically based, students learn by communicating and avoiding focused activities in the classroom.

In additions, it is outstanding to analyze and know others aspect that influence in the process of innovation. This is the case of different types of syllabus. Such as the procedural syllabus is also called communicational syllabus and was and English language teaching project that start in southern India and last from 1979 to 1984. Also, it was known as the Bangalore Project and emerges as a discontent with the structural syllabus developed during that time, so the innovation was adapted into three aspects that will support the focus teaching gold. First, the syllabus content was not linguistically based, so it tried to use tasks instead of preselected language items. Second, the main idea was for students to learn language by communicating. Third, the idea to avoid corrections and apply games will reinforce the possibility to promote communication language.

Following with the topic, it’s crucial to think about the changes in the content. At the beginning of the text emphasized in technological innovation, the use of internet, computers, etc. Moreover, it is important to analyze that also must change the content form as a way to innovate in the field of teachings. All changes and innovations are complicated, because interfering with the old methods that have been used. For example, in some societies like Islamic where they have strictest rules and customs and sometimes rejected the used of new technology as internet because they consider as corrupted manner for their society is very difficult the implementation of technology. In this case, is viable the change of content or teaching method. Not all people have the same perception of things.

As a conclusion,  a curricular innovation involve sort of situations which are linked each other since the beginning, the environment in which it is developed, the facilities it has for being implemented and understood; even if it is success or discarded by people in which it is used.  A person who decides to implement a new innovation in their place of working has to take into consideration or make some questions or think about it, for example: if it will work with students, when do I have to use it? What do I have to adopt? Will my students adopt or reject it? At the same time, while some students adopt some innovation others are not and vice versa. The classroom activities have to be so different from the ones many students know nowadays; the classroom activities must be an interaction among teacher and students in which learner and facilitator feel comfortable with all the situations happen around them. As well as, the knowledge acquired have to be constructed by the students where they interact with their classmates exchanging information and stimulate each other; at the same time, using different techniques that make students go over the traditional lesson and get strong in those areas they are weaken.  Also, the facilitator has to take into account many aspects such as the topics are going to be taught, the area where he is teaching and the syllabus he has for working on, as well as, the needs and facilities and negative aspects he has to handle while he is in the process of  teaching.

Friedrich Wilhem August Froebel

Background

Friedrich was a German educator who born in a small village in Turingia (Oberweissbach) on April 21,1782. He had an unhappy childhood because his mother died when he was just nine months after his birth. His father was a very strict orthodox Lutheran minister who remarried when Friedrich was four years old. It was difficult because his stepmother never feel affection for Friedrich. He attended to a girls´primary school because of his father´s insistence.  At the age of ten Friedrich went to live with his uncle Herr Hoffman, also a Lutheran minister, in a small town and attendes the local school. When Froebel was 15 years old, he start apprenticed to a forester and developed his appreciation for nature. At the age of 32 he married Henrietta Wilhelmine Hoffmeister who assisted him until her death.

Career

In 1799, Froebel took some courses such us mathematics, botany, philosophy and architecture at the University of Jena, Frankfurt, but never finished any of those. In 1801, he became a land surveyor and a clerk in the forestry department of the state of Bamburg. In 1805, after developing many occupations he becomes an educator in a secondary school called Musterschule. Froebel study languages and science at the University of Gottingen from 1810 to 1812. During that time, he worked with Johann Pestalozzi´s institute tutoring attending boys in Yverdon, Switzerland. For a short period he served in the army to oppose Napoleon. In 1814 he returned to the University of Berlin and got a position in the school´s mineralogical museum. The year of 1816 was transcendental in his life because Friedrich established the Universal German Educational Institute at Griesheim based on his own educational theories related with nature and some physical and mental aspects of the student´s growth and development. On Lake Sempach in Switzerland, Froebel founded an institute at Wartensee and then relocated the school to Willisau. At that time, he managed an orphanage and operated an school at Burgdorf. In 1837 he returned to Germany and established a new type of early childhood school, a kindergarten for three and four years old children. He used play, songs, stories, and activities in order to develop the appropriate environment for the development of the children education by their self activity. Friedrich reputation increase and kindergartens were established throughout the German states.  He rich the top of his career designing educational play materials known as Froebel Gifts and published many literary work. One of his famous publications were The Education of Man (1826). According to Friendrich Froebel, “Education consists in leading man, as thinking, intelligent being, growin into self-consciousness to a pure and unsullied, conscious and free representation of the inner law of Divine Unity, and in teaching him ways and means”.  In that book he expressed his philosophy about educational undertakings and the unity of all in God.