Demonstrated ability to articulate how one’s worldview/faith, identity, and teaching philosophy impact one’s pedagogy and professional activities.
Description
Faith, Identity, and Pedagogy was created for my Final Portfolio during the Spring 2020 term. The Teaching Philosophy section was adapted from my Beliefs chapter, which was created for TESL 560: Language Program Design, taken in the Fall 2019 term with Dr. Tasha Bleistein. This artifact provides a description of my faith, teaching identity, and teaching philosophy, and how these factors impact my pedagogy and participation in professional activities.
Reflection
Throughout my time in this program, I have been challenged to examine how my Christian faith should impact my pedagogy and professional activities. I have realized that Christ’s example draws me to a posture of emptying myself of any self-important status (Philippians 2:7) and being willing to learn from my students and colleagues. Articulating my identity as a teacher was a struggle that sparked some deep self-reflection. I began to understand how my identity as a language learner and the resulting experiences living in Latin America have shaped who I am as a teacher. My teaching philosophy was another challenge to pinpoint, but through the process of designing a language course I was able to identify some of my key beliefs: the importance of focusing on strategies to help learners overcome affective barriers, relating instruction to real-world applications, and using the learners’ L1 as a tool to enhance L2 learning.
Application
My Christian faith, teaching identity, and teaching philosophy each play a part in shaping my pedagogy and professional activities. I plan to focus on the things that are most important to me and invest time in reading and classroom research that I can subsequently share with the TESOL community through conference presentations and journal articles. I plan to challenge myself to present a workshop and/or write a peer reviewed article on a yearly basis, which will provide motivation for continued learning on topics of interest, as well as the opportunity for me to serve my fellow TESOL professionals.