I believe teachers must be guides that help students acquire the skills and techniques that are necessary in life to be autonomous learners and independent actors of and contributors to society. In the classroom, this means that I make sure not to bring answers too soon. I'd much rather have the students endeavor in a quest to solve a problem or to answer a question, and to find a solution or response themselves. When I give an answer, I make sure to explain the techniques students can use to find it themselves next time. As a language teacher, this also means that I teach students how to use tools such as dictionaries, the internet, international experiences, etc. to learn the language by themselves.
My valuing of autonomy also means that I want students to figure some things out on their own and become reflective inquirers and thinkers. This is one of the reasons why I include a lot of immersion time in my language teaching, even for beginners. For example, my one-to-two-periods-a-week of only-French, during my student teaching at Monroe Middle School (Eugene, Oregon, USA) in French 1, allowed students to find ways to find out the meaning of words without having recourse to English (by pointing at things, drawing pictures, acting), and even to build sentences they had never been taught how to build. I think it is important for language learners to know how to experience confusion and the frustration of not being able to say everything they want to say. One of my roles as a teacher is to teach them to persevere and keep taking risks to get out of the confusion, and lead them to go beyond the frustration and use it to find new ways of expression, to identify what they still need to acquire, and to strive towards these new acquisitions.
During a unit on urban gardening, my students at LSTS (Vietnam) are discussing in the target language to figure out how to best design their vertical garden:
If autonomy is essential in life, people do live in societies. It is therefore primordial to teach students how to help each other, how to work in groups, in a word, how to collaborate. This is why my teaching involves group work on a daily basis. Students are expected to help those who struggle, to be caring, and they are expected to build something together. It seems impossible to teach a language without interacting with others anyway. Group projects allow students to interact with each other in the target language, to construct meaning together, to learn from each other's mistakes and strengths.
I myself try to collaborate with the teaching team of the school and with the community as much as possible. For example, when I taught a unit on India in the French immersion program of South Eugene High School (Oregon, USA), I organized a skype conversation between my students and a Hindu temple in France. At Monroe Middle School, in Eugene too, my last unit was three weeks of group projects about different French speaking countries. We collaborated with French speakers around the world, and had foreign students at the local university be guest speakers. At the end, students held presentations for the community (parents and outside guests), about the French speaking countries they researched.
My LSTS students skyping with a professional jazz pianist in France:
I strive for excellence and constant improvement in my teaching. Thus, I expect the same of my students. One of the concepts I explore with them from the very beginning of the year is "perseverance". I always spend some time asking them to define the word and to explain what it practically means. I also take time to have them explain why it is important to persevere. Throughout the year, I put the concept in practice by being demanding but encouraging. To guide them better, I always take a lot of time to give clear feedback, either in writing or during individual conferences. I also sometimes keep "conversation journals" with my students, sorts of written conversations, on paper, that allow me to get to know each student better and create rapport, to give individualized advice on a weekly basis, and to find out about each student's need so that I can differentiate my teaching.
Experts can be of valuable help to reach excellence: below, a professional graphic designer I invited advises students on how to improve their artistic world map:
