By Ella May Ho
By Ella May Ho
Learning How to Teach
Ella with her fellow student-teachers along with their students from a children’ s literature course. The children are holding up masks based off of Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat.
I used to think that being a teacher meant just standing in front of the classroom, passing on whatever you know to your students, grading all their homework and then repeating the cycle all over again. Well, guess what? Teaching is more than just passing on knowledge! Being a teacher extends far beyond the classroom and involves making a difference in your students’ lives. You should truly get to know your students well enough to know how to help each of them. As a prospective teacher, I’ m expected to be mentoring a large group of students for eight hours every day, excluding the weekends. My students are not going to be at home most of the time because they are going to be in the classroom with me instead. This means that I can potentially have a big influence on them.
I am currently specialising in English primary education. In Year 3, I took course about developing the oral and literacy skills of children learning English. It involved learning about methods that help students achieve and improve all the four skills of language, namely reading, writing, speaking and listening. For me, that was the first time I learned about effective pedagogies specifically at the primary level, because the other education courses I had taken were either about the Hong Kong primary curriculum and assessment, or critical thinking on education and teaching in general. The course allowed me to be more practical and productive in my own teaching.
I have to admit that during my first few lessons at my part-time job, I tended to rely on the English textbook that I was given and have students complete by the end of the term. All I did was have students finish the exercises on a page in the textbook one by one, then stand in front of the blackboard and check the answers with them. Having students answer all the black spaces in the textbook was the task and having their textbooks fully completed at the end of the course was the goal. And that was it. Now, I am more eager to teach English in creative ways. As we all may know, in Hong Kong, English has not always been the most exciting subject for local students. Seeing how English is taught in local schools nowadays and considering the large emphasis on tackling exams, students may see the language as just a chore to get over with.
One of the most important things that I’ ve learnt
FEBRUARY 2018 12