Beyond the Blackboard

Beyond the Blackboard

     Days ago, we watched a movie called Beyond the Blackboard. The movie presented the story of a teacher who had to face lots of problems in her first job as educator. This problems, instead of making her quit of the job, endured her and help her become an inspiration for her students.

     We have here some questions that will help us understand more the message of the movie.

BEYOND THE BLACKBOARK

-Discuss Stacey’s first week at the school. How were The School with No Name and its students different from what she expected? What was her reaction to these differences?

Stacey's first week was very difficult for her because the place was not what she expected. As a new teacher, she thought she was going to teach in a very fancy school, but she had to go where her superior told her to go. When she got to the "new" school, she realized that the reality of poor school was shacking. The school was not even school; it was some sort of garage with few tables and the walls painted with shady colors. When the children arrived, she noticed that they didn't have work books, notebooks, and anything necessary for good education. At the beginning, she felt so overwhelmed that she wanted to quite. After a long consideration, she decided she was going to make a change.

-In the beginning of the film, Stacey said “school was a safe place with a glimpse of who I wanted to be.” How did her determination change the environment of the shelter school and her students?

We think that since Stacey’s dream was to become a teacher, she would not stop at anything to achieve it. Even in a forgotten school, Stacey kept devoted to teach no matter the problems and the lack of interest the school was facing.

-Stacey tried to relate to her new students by showing them a photo album of her family and talking about her life. The kids could not relate to her pictures and experiences. Why not?

We think the kids could not relate to her because their social context was not the same. While she grew up with everything she wanted in life, those kids grew up in the streets. She also showed photos of her happy family. The kids were not used to seeing a happy family; all they knew was poverty and sadness.

-Discuss some of the life circumstances of the students. What types of adversities did they face physically and emotionally? How did their poverty make learning more difficult?

The kids from the movie faced many problems. Some of them came from broken marriages, and some of them had drug addict parents. One girl and her father was illegal immigrant, and they were always afraid of being caught by immigration police. Another girl had to help mother to work. These problems, together with poverty, made the kid’s learning a difficult task. All they knew was a world of problems; therefore, when their new teacher arrived, everything they knew changed. We think the kids and their parents felt so overwhelmed for all the changes that they were not ready to accept them.

-The classroom initially came with almost no supplies and little support from school board officials and reluctant parents. Despite these challenges, Stacey Bess was able to create a warm, safe place for the children to learn. In addition, she was able to earn the support and respect of parents and administrators. Resourcefulness is the ability to find a way to solve problems in a difficult situation. What creative solutions did Stacey find to transform The School with No Name? How did she overcome the lack of supplies, environmental distractions and other issues?

Stacey changed her attitude. At the beginning she was disappointed of the kind of “school” that she was assigned to teach, but then she thought that if she changed her mind, things would become better for her and her students.

So, she wanted to make the “classroom” look like a real one, beautiful, cleaned, with colorful pictures on the walls. When she realized that the School District Representative wouldn’t help giving her the things that she and the students would need in the classroom, she decided to do it by herself. On weekend, she started to paint the walls of the classroom to make it look better, and she bought and brought new things and materials for the students.

When the parents noticed that she was doing her best for the students to learn, they started to help her too. In that way, everyone in the shelter started to admire her and all her effort.

-Poverty impacts people of all ages, races and backgrounds. The reasons for people being at the shelter are as different as each individual. What are some of the reasons for characters in the film coming to the shelter?

Some of the people were coming to the shelter because they were homeless people. They slept in their cars because they don’t have a house to live. Some of them were in the shelter just for some time, and some kids’ parents were in jail.

-The previous teacher placed “shame names” on the board and played movies all day to keep the kids occupied. The students and parents were initially wary of Stacey because they thought she would be the same as her predecessor.

-What actions did she take to earn their trust? How did trust play a role in the school’s success?

She started to show them that she was really interested on children’s learning. She wanted a real classroom environment, so she did everything that was possible to improve the place in which children were supposed to lean. Children started to appreciate her effort to teach them and all the things that she did for them to learn. They trusted on her and on her will to help them to be good persons.

Stacey talked to the children about respect. They began to share their experiences of when they encountered a lack of respect – from police, from a parent or from another person. The classroom could only be a safe, calm and quiet place to learn if everyone showed respect for each other.

-Discuss how respect or a lack of respect was shown in the film.

At the first week, when Stacey started to teach in the School with No Name, the children weren’t respectful with her. They were disobedient and annoying, so Stacey went out of her nerves and screamed at them. The next week she asked them to talk about respect, and she apologize because she wasn’t respectful when she was screaming at them. Then they started to share their experiences; one of them said that he saw how a police officer wasn’t respectful with her mother while another student said that she knew a good police officer who helped her and her brother.

-Why is respect important in a school setting?

Stacey said that respecting each other would create a good environment for learning. That’s why they have to be respectful with their classmates.

Stacey encourages the students to think of words to put on the board to describe their feelings. By giving these feelings names, the children were able to express themselves more clearly.

What vocabulary words were used?

When Stacey and the students were talking about respect, she wrote some words that they said were important to create a comfortable and good environment for learning. Some of those words were: Respectful, brave, acceptable, anxious, beautiful, caring, compassionate, interesting, healing, hopeful, eager, hilarious, enthusiastic, polite, handy, kind, comfortable, perplexed, exclusive, friendly, jolly, smile, strong, careful, confident, handsome, clever, witty, polite, able, quiet, happy, outrageous, etc.

-Why were these words so important to the children?

These words were so important to the children because they were written from the experiences that they shared. Also, with that vocabulary children were able to express their feelings in a better way depending on the situation that they were facing.

-Describe Stacy Bess.

Stacey Bess.
She is a very determined teacher who never gives up even if the circumstances are very difficult to cope. She loves her work, and she is always looking to give the best for their students. She is a woman with great determination and courage despite having everything against her. She goes ahead in its work and pursued to the end what she wants to achieve.

-What struck you about the movie?

The film shows us the other side of educational system. It shows the great love that a teacher can reach to develop their work and how far they can get to help their students not only in the classroom but also outside of it. The film shows how a teacher gives all out for their students and how teachers can change the lives of their students and also their parents.

-COOL-SCHOOL MODEL:






What’s in a name?

It is the grouping of several letters of an alphabet, or other symbols, which represent the identification of a person or an object. A name is the identity of something, something that characterizes you; a name can demonstrate how important something and necessary is.

Why do you think the school did not have a name?

I think that was because it was a school that did not matter to anyone and did not have teachers who cared for it. The school was placed where no one wanted to go and less studying or send their children. So I think the school did not have a name for those reasons.

Would the school have had an easier transition to success if it did have a name?

We think the transition would have been easier. At the beginning, the school and the students did not an identity in the community; therefore, there were no resources for the school. With a name, the school could ask for help to organizations to receive some aid.

What would you name the school?

I would name it as the teacher Stacey Bess because thanks to all her effort and dedication, the school could become the school that everyone needed and where everyone could learn in a beautiful place.

Self-assessment of my learning 

By: David Jimenez

     Teaching English to young learners seemed a little scarry to me. At the begining, I felt lost in the classroom teaching my first class, but when the days past, I felt more confident. Thanks to this experience, I have gained a lot of things. First, I learned how to manage children. Working with children is not exactly my forte becuase my patience levels with them were not too high. This leads me to my second achievement: patience. I gained a lot of patience working with children; they alwas want to know something new, ad they like to ask for things even thogh they already know those things. The third goal I achieved is to be responsible. We can not just take teaching as if it is a conversation with friend; we need to know that what we teach is going to cause an impact in our students lives.

     At the end, I can say that teaching has changed my life. I was not sure of me being a teacher, but now I know that I really enjoy teaching. I hope this experience does not end here, and I can continue molding the minds of a new generation.

Self-assessment of our learning

By: Humerto Escalante

     For me, the experience of teaching helped me a lot in many ways.

• It helped me become more responsible. Working with children is a hard task that needs to be taken seriously. We can not just walk inside of a classroom to teach what we want. We need to plan everything.
• It helped me organize my time. As said before, we need to plan everything. Time is one the most precious treasures we have as teachers. We need to take care of it.
• I helped me worry about the others and be awere of other's doubts and difficulties. Every child is a word, and we need to take special atention to every single one of them.  

    For all these reasons and perhaps more, I enjoyed this experience a lot, and I hope I can have the opportunity of continuing teaching in the future. I hope one day I can become a great teacher to create a big impact in young learners minds. 

Self-assessment and evaluation of our own learning

By: Luis Linares

    
     Taking this subject has been a great experience to me because we have learned how to become good teachers to face real problems that might occur in the classroom. I learned how to interact with children though it is not too difficult to me to stablish good relationships with them. I also learned how to deal with the particular behavior that every children have in the classroom. I consider I made a good job with my students because they seemed to learn everything I thought them. Sometimes, I was surprised of the potential they have even though they get easily distracted. Teaching English to young learners was a nice experience to me because no matter how good or bad teacher you are, children will love you and learn from you.

Self-assessment and evaluation of our own learning

By: Andrea Zaldivar

     For me this course has been really important. I think I have learned a lot of new things related to the teaching-learning processes. I really enjoyed the course because it was aimed not only for us to learn theory, but also to experience in a real teaching-learning environment. Talking about my own learning, I can say that I feel satisfy with the things that I have learned. Now, I know several things that I can apply and develop in the classroom, and I feel able to handle a real class with real students. Of course I’m conscious that there are a lot of things that I have to learn and improve, but I hope I will do it step by step and through new experiences.

     In my opinion, one of the best parts of this course has been the teaching practicum with kindergarten students. I could face the real part of teaching. It wasn’t that easy at the beginning because it was like meeting a new world, but then I started to enjoy my role as a teacher. This course gave me the opportunity to know new people, to interact with other people, and I’m really thankful because of that.

Traditional teaching vs. 21st century teaching

     This are the top ten traits of the 21st century teachers ELT practicioner that we chose.


1. Use of technology

2. More approachment to the children’s needs

3. Use of visual aids

4. Learning by doing

5. Mistakes as part of the learning process

6. Teachers as guides

7. Learners as the center of the learning process

8. Use of the internet to get more information

9. Use of warm-up activities

10. Giving feedback after classes

     The salient traits between NESTs and non-NESTs

     NESTs and non-NESTs are all over the word, and there is always the big question: who is a better teacher? There are many differences between this two types of teachers. We are going to take some of those differences, and we are going to develope some of them. Note that we are not saying which teacher is better than the other. We are just making a comparison to point that even with those differences, both teachers play an important role in teaching English.

Academic vocabulary vs day-to-day vocabulary

     Non-NESTs try to teach vocabulary found in books in order to communicate in controled situations. On the other hand, NESTs focus their lectures on vocabulary used every day in real life situations.

Fluency vs accuracy

     Non-NESTs teachers are focused on developing students pronunciation. For non-NESTs teachers, fluency is the most important skill to develop for student while for NESTs teachers, accuracy (producing language with minimun effort) is what students need the most. 

Focus on form vs focus on forms

     Non-NESTs teachers focus their classes on the instruction of grammar rules while NESTs teachers focus their classes on developing communication skills.

     As we can see every teacher has a different way to teach the language, but at the end, there is not such thing as "the best teacher."

THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

     In every class, we need to use as many tools as we can. Some of the most important tools are visual aids. Here we have some of the visual aids and activities we use while doing our teaching practices.

   

 

 

This is a small display of photos that were taken from the first clotheline presentation

                  

  

  

  

  

When things go wrong

By: Luis Linares

     I faced an experience similar to David’s. Every day, we have to face problems whether they are big or small. When doing my practices, I had to deal with some difficulties at the time I was teaching. One day, I was to teach to my students the food times and the names of some food. I had some teaching material ready, and I planned to play a song related to the topic for my students to listen to it. I asked for a CD player to play the song. Unfortunately, the staff did not have a CD player with a USB driver. I had to use a plan B. I played the song on my cellphone, but the audio was not strong enough for the whole class. I did not know what to do; since the song did not sounded, every child started to run around the place making noise and throwing things to the floor. It was time for plan C. I gave the children pages with drawings related to the topic for them to color them. Doing this, I was able to regain the control of the class.

When things go wrong

By: David Jimenez

     When I started teaching, I knew there would be some trouble. Everything started very normal; the children behaved well, and they listened to every word I said. One day, I was asking some questions to each child, and out of nowhere, a kid started to scream every time someone answered my questions. At first, I did not make a big deal of it, but the kid's scream were getting louder and louder. I had to do something. I took him and his desk to the front of the classroom for him to be separated from his classmates. When I finshed asking to the other kids, I came to the little trouble maker and asked him to answer every question I asked to his classmates.  I think that worked; after he finished answering all the questions, he started to behave well. At the end, the class ran normally, and I could finished the lesson I had planned.

     When you want to use digital resources, make sure they will work. One day, I wanted to play a song related to sea animals to make the class more active. I had downloaded a song the previous night, and I was very excited to play it. I thought the school had a music player with an USB bus driver. Turns out they did have a music player, but it did not work with USB. I decided to play the song directly from my cellphone, but it did not work; the volume of my cellphone was not high enough for children to listen to the song.  At the end, I could play the song, so I had to do another activity realted to the topic I was teaching.

When things go wrong in class

By: Andrea Zaldivar

    In my teaching practicum, I had to face some difficult situations. One of these situations was that one day there was an internal disturbance in my class.

   I had assigned them one activity; the activity was about coloring a picture of a dog which was the animal that I taught them in that class. It was supposed that all of them were working on the activity, and I was monitoring that the students were developing the activity in the right way. Then I had to start checking that some of the students had already finished with the task. In that moment while I was distracted with the other kids, two of my students started to fight without any reason. I was really surprised with the situation because I had never faced something like that before, but I tried to keep calm. I interfered in the fight, but it didn’t work at all until I talked to them angry. Besides, they went to their sits and everything was okay. I felt kind of uncomfortable with the situation that I had to face in that moment, but my tutor told me that I didn’t have to feel in that way, something like that happens almost every day.

     There are some tips or recommendations that I could apply in order to solve that situation, but being the first time that I faced something like that in the classroom, I couldn’t think of the best way to stop it. Fortunately, it wasn’t that serious. Even I couldn’t apply some of the recommendations that we are supposed to know; I could handle and stop that awkward moment.

WHEN THINGS GO WRONG IN CLASS 

By: Humberto Escalante

     At the very beginning of my teaching practice, I had to face a lot of troubles with my pupils because they were so hyperactive. They didn’t pay attention in class, and didn’t want to participate in any activity that I gave them. The classroom was not big enough in order to make activities that required move around that was another thing that I couldn’t control.

     As an external factor, I can say that the location of the school is not very suitable because it is located in one of the noisiest streets. Heat and noise are factors that disrupt students learning.

As I said previously, at the beginning, I faced a lot of troubles with the students. Since I started to work with them, there were some trouble makers that drove me crazy, but I tried to do my best with them. I wanted they feel comfortable with my class, and enjoyed them.

     There were a lot of activities that took too much time because I had to be working with all of them. I had to attend to any doubt that they could have, and helped some of them because they didn’t understand what the activity was about and some other things.

     Sometimes I didn’t have too much time to finish my class or the activities that we were doing because the organization in the school was not too good. Some teachers didn’t pay attention to the time for each class, and they decided to finish their classes few minutes before. The noise of the students running around made my students felt anxious to go out as soon as possible.

     Well, I consider that all of the activities that I carried out worked perfectly. Some of them, as I said before, took too much time in order to be done, but all my students, at the end of each class, were anxious, excited and expectant to the next class and activities.

     One of the most difficult situations that I had to face was that in the school where I did my teaching practices, there were many children that were children of gang members. As they knew their parents status, sometimes, they thought that they were untouchable. I was terrified when the teacher told me that, but she said to me that everything is going to be ok, that I had to teach what I had prepared, and if there were some difficulties, I had to tell her immediately. Thanks God I didn’t have any problem with my students. I tried to punish them in a really sweet way; I looked for the best ways to talk with them, such as, talking about cartoons and videogames. Then I started to relate my activities with the games that they liked and with their favorite cartoons.

     I have to be sincere and accept that I did not use any tip for the chapter 8. I tried to work in my own way, and I consider that it worked. Of course, it did not work not with the same results, but It was an amazing opportunity to see if I have the ability to create my own tips for teaching. However, it was my pleasure to teach children that drove me crazy, but nevertheless filled my teaching practice of satisfaction and great joy.

Listening, Oral Work, Reading, and Writing

      

There were many challenges to face while doing oir practices, specially those realted to the four macro skills of English. When it comes to writing, reading and speaking, the children may feel overwhelmed for all the words they don't know. If we talk about a skill that children can easily develop, we must talk about listening. Children seem fascinated when they listen to their teacher speaking English; they always want to know the meaning or the translation of words.

     We all know that the learning of a new language begings bay being expose to the target language. This is why we, as group, consider that we must pay attention to the listening skill. Obviously, we need to accompany listening activities with visual aids for children to learn new words at the same time they see the real objects.

    Most of the time we were running our practices, we used coursebook material. This was a good tool for teaching because every content children were studying was there; we just needed to make some arrangements to suit the contents to our way to teach.

    We all agree that the activity we use the most was individual work. We worked with small groups of students, and that gave us the chance to make them work by their own. We consider this activity worked because we make them use their own ideas and not their classmates'. 

     Some of the activities we did not put into 

practice are:

1. writing activities
2. reading activities
3. getting feedback from learners
4. increasing student-student interaction
5. small groups discussions
6. pairwork grammar activities
7. working with individual differences
8. organising students into levels

     The first four activities are the most suitable in our context. We need to make more emphasis in reading and writing activities to help our students get involved and exposed to English. By getting feedback, not only do we get to know what we did good or bad, but also students remember what they learned and how to express knowledge in their own terms. Increasing student-student interaction can help students know their classmates opinion and learn vocabulary that they probably did not know.

    

     The last four activities would depend on the amount of students you have in your class. If we have a large group of students, we may choose to work in small groups or pairs. Organising stundents into levels and working with their individual differences may work with students from a higher level. If we put labels to children, they may feel bad or sad. It would be better to work with the group as a whole.

     At the end, we need to find a way of teaching that best suit our personality and vision as teachers. We can do a research looking for the best methods, but we can also create our own style.

Classroom management and atmosphere. By Andrea Zaldívar

  In my teaching practicum, I had the opportunity to work with a group of 25 children. Since the beginning, I was really surprised to see the facility that chindren have to learn new things related to a foreign language. I really loved that all of them were always interested in the activities that I brought for them.

   Of course there were some little troublemakers in my class. At the beginning it was kind of difficult for me trying to handle the situation, but I did my best to keep the order in the classroom and to create a good atmosphere for learning.

   Talking about the way or the methods I had to look for, I tried to use audio visual methods. I supported my classes with some flash cards that were very useful. Also, I needed some audios to make the class more interactive, and I think it was a good option because through audios and pictures, they could internalize quickly the things that were taught.

   Basically, I can say that I really enjoyed my teaching practices, and the way that I could interact with real learners in  real classes, and a real teachig-learning atmosphere.

Classroom Management and Atmosphere. By Luis Linares
   
     In my teaching practice I had the opportunity to work with children from kindergarten, some of them were so exited to learn English. The group was made of 17 children and  I could establish a good rapport with all of the children. Some of them liked to participate, but others  had problems with their speaking skills, but with a little help it could be fixed.

My teaching style was accessible and very patient even though there were students who were not paying attention I tryed  to explained every detail of the topic I was teaching. If they had any doubt I  explained to them what they didn't understand using flash cards, writting in the blackboard and repeting the vocabulary we were studying, but if that was not enough I put in practice another way to make them undertand the topic.

My personal goal is to be a great teacher who can make feel his students interested and comfortable to learn English as foreing language.

classroom management and atmosphere. By Humberto Escalante

     Since the beginning of my teaching pratice, I had  the big opportunity to work with a group of 20 students. i know they were to many but I think that I did it well. I realized that some of them had many abilities to learn English as well. Some of them had a good attention span and they were always attending every direction that I gave them.

     As TVYL teacher I had to look for some difficulties that my pupils had in some activities: groupal and individual. I prefered to work with flash cards, images, charts, because I considered that for my students that were pretty "visual learners" that was the best to had the fisrt encounter with English. at tha beginning of my English teaching practice I had some problems with some of my students, because some of them didn't pay attention in the first classes, and I was pretty worried in that embarrasing situation. Then I tried to do my best and work with some activities that helped me to face this situation.

   I can consider that was a big expirience to teach those children, sometimes they were "a pain in the neck" but was absolutely fantastic worked with them. One of my personal goals was that I didn't realize that I had the capacity to work with children and in fact I could do it.

Class management and atmosphere By: David Jimenez 

     During my teaching practice, I had the opportunity to work with a group of 9 children. All of them had their own abillities to learn though just few of them had the eagerness of learning English. I had the chance to create a good rapport with all of the children. What helped me create a good rapport was the classroom atmosphere. The classroom was well adecuated to the teaching; it was big enough to host children, it the desks were arranged in a semicircle shape. 

     My personal teaching style is to show directly the contents to the chlidren using flash cards. I think it is a good way of teaching because you expose children to the vocabulary you want them to learn using real images. However, I think that method would work better depending on the level we are teaching. In my case, the method work, but if I go to another level, such as high school, I will need another method beside flash cards. I consider that we need to learn and develop teaching different teaching styles and adapt them to our own style.

     My personal goal is to teach English in a way in which students feel confortable and not overwhelmed. We all know English can be a difficult language to learn, but we can try teaching it in ways that children will enjoy. We just need to keep going, and never give up on our goal to becaome good teachers.