We’re all in this together!

For Assignment number 2, we were tasked to observe or interview teachers about their different teaching strategies or practices used in the classroom. It was a great opportunity to learn especially for those who observed very experienced teachers as they have gathered or mastered methods of teaching that we haven’t learned or methods that are not necessarily taught in the course or at university. As we all know, experience is the best teacher. I enjoyed listening to the teacher I had chosen to interview; his experiences with students with varying characters, experiences with colleagues and his views on the Thai education system and the overall school environment. For someone like me who hasn’t got a lot of experience, it was delightful to hear that even those who have been teaching for a good number of years still try to learn and look for fresher ideas that work well with different types of learners and that they also acknowledge that they are learning from their students. Teaching indeed is learning.

I also enjoyed working with my group mates because they all have wonderful ideas that made me read more about a theory or revisit what I have learned in the modules. For example, one of the members wasn’t very sure which theory underlies drill and exercises, memory cues and rote memorization. I had thought it was Cognitive theory because it was all about storing and accessing information from memory. But she found an article that stated that drills and exercises as well as memory cues follow the behaviorist’s theory of learning as these are done to condition students to give specific responses for certain questions or contexts. We were also all very supportive and respectful of each other; our ideas, our backgrounds and our individual/personal circumstances that may have affected our contribution or performance in doing the assignment. Having an open mind and a good amount of patience, and staying positive are few of the helpful characteristics that we should have when working with others.

This assignment provided me the opportunity to hone my decision-making, communication and negotiation skills as well as developing my critical thinking and problem solving skills. I was encouraged to be more proactive in my learning because finishing the assignment required engagement and application of knowledge gained through the modules. This assignment also facilitated a greater transfer of previous knowledge from theory to practice, through others’ experiences and through evaluation of what I already knew in relation to theory and practice. Analyzing the different strategies that the teachers used in their classrooms and identifying the learning theories or principles that underlie their application or effectiveness helped solidify my understanding of the theories.  The assignment also provided me with a structured learning experience that could help me prepare for the realities of the workplace, working with people with different backgrounds, cultures, skills and approaches.

The only thing that I thought was not a great idea was allowing us to have too many members in the group.  Having people who are not even in the same country or are very busy with their respective jobs work together meant we had to spend a lot of time waiting for everybody to read and think about suggestions or ideas before we were able to make decisions or act on our agreed methods. Another challenge that I thought we had to face was deciding how much information we should put in or how many observations we should include in the assignment. Initially, our assignment was too long as there wasn’t a set limit of how many or how much was needed. Deciding which ones should be included over the others was pretty difficult as we all did our best and felt that our work deserved to be in the final output. Nevertheless, good teamwork helped us finish the task on time and we are confident that we have a good quality assignment.