As a future teacher in Business Education and ELL, I draw my motivation and inspiration from my education, my work experiences, and what I want to instill in my students.  I am fortunate to have a wide variety of work experiences in the business and teaching field prior to being a Teacher Candidate at the University of British Columbia.

Although I understand thorough coverage of course material is necessary, I believe it’s more important to help students understand the reason for learning certain topics. My students will be in a classroom where an open and safe atmosphere is fostered, and where they feel comfortable asking questions and being fully interactive and participatory.  I encourage my students to be supportive of each other, so my quieter students would feel comfortable asking their peers for help prior to asking me directly, and also my more outgoing students would feel comfortable helping their peers.  Creating my ideal classroom environment will require me to very interactive and engaging, so I plan to achieve my ideal classroom by creating my lesson plans by asking myself what my students should be able to do by the end of the class, and then create the necessary class content, activities, and assignments.

 

Who Am I as a Developing Professional?

For my business education students, I aim to motivate them to be aware of the different ways business touches on every aspect of human society and how it drives world economies.  They will be able to understand that I view business as a part of our lives.  Just as people learn about nutrition and exercise, being financially literate will open many different opportunities for future careers.  Every business or corporation requires employees with business degrees to work in any of the FAME (finance, accounting, management, economics) sectors, to working in other business departments such marketing, retail, or human resources. For my ELL students, I aim to motivate them by utilising their existing knowledge and creating interactive lessons that relate to mainstream classes as much as possible. I am aware that much of the density of the course content will have to be altered to fit to different levels of the students, but I believe the extra step is needed to engage students and keep them curious.  Regardless, I hope I will be able to pass on transferable skills my students will be able to utilize including problem solving, decision making, engaging presentation skills, strong communication skills, and knowledge of using and interpreting financial data to support arguments and presentations.

My students will receive clear expectations of every course, lesson, and assignment. My goal is to make every lesson clear and concise, and I want to inspire my students to stay curious and take risks for their intellectual development.

 

What Have I Learned From This Year?

Inquiry question: What corrective feedback methods and strategies could I implement to help students improve their English writing?

My inquiry question is significant to me because I want to provide useful and relevant feedback to help ELL students address language and subject knowledge gaps so they can join mainstream classes sooner. Another reason I want to explore this question is so I can prevent any fossilization of poor English writing (and to an extent speaking) habits in ELL and students in regular classes.

I expect to find out which kind of corrective feedback is the most effective for different kinds of writing errors. I also want to find out how to effectively provide corrective feedback in respects to timing, frequency, and the amount of feedback to provide at a time.  Lastly, I want to find out the impact of my corrective feedback on students’ short term retention and long term writing skills.

I expect to use my findings in my ELL classes and Business Education classes to help students who are struggling with academic or business writing to improve their writing ability in assignments and tests so they can join mainstream classes sooner. I have experience tutoring students in English, and I personally find one on one tutoring and discussing the errors to be helpful.  However, I know I will not be able to address each individual student directly on a regular basis, especially during my short practicum.  I want to learn and implement the most efficient and effective way to address errors to each student so they can learn from their mistakes.  I also hope other teachers can use my findings and incorporate some methods into their own classes.

After my practicum and CFE, I became to realize that the practicality of giving one on one feedback to my students is not feasible. As a result, my inquiry question evolved from finding corrective feedback methods, to finding methods to divide and plan my class time so I can meet with a small number of students on a daily basis, so I will be able to meet with every student within one week.

I have also done research in the effects of positive and negative “washback” from tests on my teaching methods.  I want to place less stress on my students’ tests results from something that they have to do, to something they can learn from before the next chapter or unit.  I utilized methods such as journals, peer discussions and evaluations, to self-evaluations. From those methods, we can discuss and reflect on areas of improvements for future chapters and topics.  To help students focus on class and course objectives, I could use washback to even “wash forward” the materials for my students to focus.

 

How Will I Continue to Grow Professionally?

To grow professionally, I am interested in obtaining a mentor and working with seasoned teachers in my next place of employment.  I believe having a mentor will help me find resources and give me advice in how to deal with certain situations.

I will also participate in professional development days to obtain skills and to work with other teachers in my school.  Lastly, I will be an active member in my school community by helping coaching and being in the Life-Skills room.