I feel that I must preface this blog post with an admission: I did not always want to be an English teacher. Being a teacher is not a role I believe I was destined to fulfill. However, it is a role that allows me to help people and make it my job to never stop learning—two things I have always wanted to accomplish in life. This blog post will outline my experiences both as a student and as an ESL teacher, what methods I found effective, and learning theories and approaches I plan to adopt in my future classrooms to complement the BC English Language Arts Curriculum. Let us dive right in!
As a high school student, my experience in Language Arts classes was stale and failed to challenge me in any way. Not only that, all but one of my professors seemed checked out, just riding out their last years before retirement. As a result, despite enjoying literature and writing, to a degree, I only ever did what was required to get a decent mark. In university, I finally began challenging myself and decided to major in English. My professors inspired me, provided me with invaluable resources and insight, and convinced me my ideas were worth sharing. One professor named Peter, however, stood out from the rest. I met him during my exchange to China.
Although I did not know I wanted to be a teacher at the time, my exchange to China was where I had my first inclining. I spent a month in a small town called Baotou along with five other students and Peter. The class itself was called “Global Studies” and focused on the vast interconnectedness of nations through interdisciplinary scopes. Given the size of our class, Peter opted for a more constructivist approach to the classroom and utilized our daily experiences as a means of facilitating new knowledge formation. Each student brought something to the lesson: an exchange with their host family or another local student or something the observed in the street on their way to school. The learning experience became a sort of collaborative experiment in which we, as a group, worked together to decipher the meaning and significance of our experiences. As a learner, I felt that I learned more during this month-long exchange than I did in the previous year.
About a year after I completed my Bachelor of Arts, I took a job as an instructor and camp counselor at Wynchemna ESL summer camp. Working at this camp offered me the opportunity to experience what being an instructor entails, observe different learning styles, create immersive and engaging lessons for all levels of ESL students, and experiment with different styles of teaching. I had next to no teaching experience prior to this and was constantly forced to step outside my comfort zone. Like the students attending Wynchemna, this was going to be a huge learning experience for me as well. Each day I taught three one-hour lessons to students from beginner to advanced levels. During these lessons, though I was not entirely aware of it, I adopted a constructivist approach. The first day I had every student write out a list of what they wanted to learn. Then I did my best to make these the topics of my lessons. I was, in a sense, facilitating inquiry-based learning. Further, the camp itself complemented a constructivist approach because the students were constantly experiencing new things and they were often the subject of our class discussions. For example, we took the students to the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller. In class the following day, we discussed what exhibits we found the most interesting. The museum was so large that not all the students got to visit each exhibit. But as each student shared their favorite exhibits, other students that were not able to see them still got to learn something from their classmates. The students began collectively constructing new knowledge through sharing their experiences with one another. It was a wonderful thing to witness.
https://www.wynchemna.com/courses <– for more photos.
Due to its effectiveness in my experience both as a student and an instructor, I will implement a constructivist or cognitivist approach when teaching the BC English Language Arts Curriculum to my future students. I plan on involving my students in the construction of lesson plans and providing them with the “scaffolding” necessary to understand and apply the material covered (Manning- Lewis, T. (2020) Learning Theories [PowerPoint Slides]). One of the Big Ideas listed in the new BC curriculum is to “Respectfully exchange ideas and viewpoints from diverse perspectives to build shared understanding and transform thinking” (BC English Language Arts Curriculum). To my mind, achieving this goal requires a cognitivist approach in which the students construct new knowledge by analyzing and contrasting new experiences with past ones (Manning- Lewis, T. (2020) Learning Theories [PowerPoint Slides]). For example, if we were discussing the construction of identities in literature, I would encourage my students to produce their own definition or understanding of identity by sharing the factors they believe shape their own. Then have them identify how these factors apply to the character’s development in the text. In doing so, we also satisfy another element of the BC curriculum which asks students to respond to texts in “personal, creative, and critical ways” (BC English Language Arts Curriculum). And finally, this approach demands that students use and improve their critical thinking skills because they will constantly be met with ideas and perspectives that differ from their own—another key skill underlined in the BC curriculum.
I understand that a solely constructivist approach will not always work, but I think being a good teacher means you understand that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to effective instruction. Therefore, while I do prefer a constructivist approach, I will always be receptive to new methods of teaching and learning. Just like their students, a good teacher never stops learning.
Thanks for listening!
Resources used:
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/english-language-arts
Manning- Lewis, T. (2020) Learning Theories [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from University of Victoria