FACULTAD HUMANIDADES

ENGLISH TEACHING PRACTICE

Reflective writing Nº1: The English classroom

I. Introduction

• What do you think the cartoon provided below is illustrating? Why? Answer briefly.

I think this cartoon clearly depicts n out of control classroom where the teacher’s leader ship
role is nonexistent. It also portrays the old school of doing class – the teacher only worried
about writing on the board!!

II. Reflective writing

• Taking into account the information you collected during the observation stage, and the
team teaching stage

1. Reflect on the students’ behavior in the English classroom.

2. Have you seen your students behaving this way? Support your answer.

3. Propose ideas to deal with disruptive students in your school.

4. You have one full page (letter format) for this task; be as clear, brief and precise
as you can

5. Use Times New Roman, size 12 letter. You may provide foot notes and references to
support you work.

6. Do not forget to attach this reflection into your own blog and share it with your peers.
The student’s behaviour in the class I had opportunity of teaching improved as time went by.
During my observation stage I noticed a reticence from the part of the students to follow the
teacher’s instructions, It was only when the teacher began yelling and threatening to send
students out of the class and down to the inspector’s office that some sense of order began to
appear in the class. They reluctantly and only minimally followed the guidelines set out by the
teacher. There seemed to be a constant struggle for power within the classroom with nobody
being too willing to cede control. The old adage of “You attract more flies with sugar than with
vinegar” did not appear to be operating here.

From the outside looking in, it was clear that the students were immune to threats and punitive
actions and that a new strategy was needed. I think the youthfulness of the supervising teacher
created more problems than solved them. Her apparent lack of tact when treating the students
was evident as she yelled out the grades of the exams saying things like”…here go all the
reds…”, or”… there were no good exams, obviously…” amongst others that belittled the
student’s abilities.

When I started teaching I made a drastic change to the class dynamics by allowing a certain
amount of classroom chatter, by calling the students by their names and asking them what
THEY wanted to learn, what was important to THEM. On a side note, whilst travelling to pick
up my car from Pena Blanca on the Metro, I overheard two young university students talking
about their teachers and their exams. One of them said that the answer to one of the questions
they’d been given had various ways of being interpreted depending on your point of view but
that the teacher had told them SHE wanted this and that as a correct answer!!. This led me to
think on how draconian sometimes we teachers can be, not allowing our students to tell us
what it is THEY know, not what we want them to know!!

My belief is that if we treat the students as people who are capable of learning and have high
expectations of them, they will come to see the genuine interest you have as a teacher so that
they better themselves. We shouldn’t be seen to be selling anything, just as those kids I
overheard on my way home. Students nowadays, more than ever, are so much savvy than we
were that to treat them with contempt leads only to frustration and complete failure on our and
their behalf. We shouldn’t try to be over them so to speak but be more alongside them, so as to
mitigate a sense of camaraderie and friendship with them. If, I may paraphrase our famous
Chilean Biologist, Humberto Maturana by stating the following: “…the closer the relationship
between a teacher and student, the more learning that will take place”. It is extremely important if we
want to gain control of the classroom, to foster friendly and cooperative relations between us
and our students through the promotion of mutual respect by ensuring that their needs are
catered for and not just fed on curricular activities that have no pertinence to their daily living.

I don’t believe there are disruptive students, but rather unimaginative and lack-luster
professionals unwilling to go the extra mile to engage their student in fun and exciting lessons.