Teaching Reflection

Shuting Shen

Colorado State University

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 In Spring 2018, I took the E528 class which is Professional ESL Teaching: From Theory

to Practice class, and I learned a lot from this class. In this class, I was not only a student-teacher

who had to write a lesson plan and teach it, but also a coach and evaluator who had to provide

comments on my colleagues' lesson plans and complete the evaluation forms and a narrative.

Before I became a student-teacher, I thought it would be easy to be a student-teacher

because I just had to write the lesson plan and follow it. However, I encountered some problems

when I was designing my lesson plan. For example, I had no idea what kinds of activities the

ESL students were interested in, and if the activities could fit my teaching goals. Then, there was

another problem. When I was teaching, I was so nervous that I forgot everything I prepared to

say. Besides, time control did not go as planned. By being a student-teacher for two classes, I

realized that it was not easy to be a teacher. Not only should the teacher take into account the

teaching goals or objectives, the content and the student-teacher' interaction, but they also need

to be able to control the time in class and solve any problems they can immediately. For

example, if an activity ends earlier than expected, so the teacher needs to be able to come up with

an activity to fill the time, rather than having the students sit there and not knowing what to do.

For my future teaching, this class gives me a good foundational experience.

I also learned a lot by being a coach and evaluator. Whether in China or the United

States, this was my first experience in the role of coach or evaluator. In China, I have completed

lesson plans as a homework assignment; I just needed to finish writing it and give it to the

teacher. I didn't need to provide evaluations for my classmates' lesson plans, and there was no

chance to teach a class according to our lesson plan. As a coach, through providing positive and

critical comments for my colleague's lesson plan, I learned a lot of good teaching activities and

some good ideas from their lesson plans. Because I needed to complete the evaluation form and a

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narrative, I was more careful when observing the class. I focused on whether the activity content

was consistent with the teacher's customized teaching objectives, the interactions between

teachers and students and whether the class was student-centered. As a coach and an evaluator

rather than a student-teacher, I still got useful teaching methods from their teaching processes

and learned how my colleagues dealt with unexpected problems as well as how to help students

understand the lesson content thoroughly.

In other words, I benefited a lot from this class. I recognized my own shortcomings, and I

have learned through the strengths of others’ teaching. Additionally, I tried to use repetition

feedback and recast feedback in my teaching process to correct ESL learners’ errors. In my

future teaching, I will be more detailed in my teaching goals or objectives when I design my

lesson plans. As a teacher, I will thoroughly familiarize myself with my teaching content before

class. Further, I'm going to look up words in the dictionary to see the correct pronunciation so

that my future students are not confused.