As an educator, there are a variety of ideas that I believe and try to bring into my classroom. To start, I believe that all students should be treated fairly and that I should do everything I can to make sure that there are no obvious favourites in the class while making sure all students have a chance to make their voice heard. 

In my lessons I keep track of who has spoken and who has not, and using that I can see who my less talkative students are, however I also do not want to make my students feel picked on while doing that, as not everyone participates in class the same way and therefore, they can pass off the question to another student.

I also believe that everyone should be able to get the help that they need in class, whether it is through the help of a peer or through asking questions about the topic being covered. I don’t like the idea of someone struggling needlessly and if I notice that I do have a student who needs that help, I want to be there to help them the best that I can as a teacher. 

I also believe that learning can be fun and that by incorporating interactive activities, students are able to better retain information. Through the use of games, students have fun recalling information covered in class. For example, my teaching partner and myself used the game of Pictionary as a warm up where the students were to draw pictures of the vocabulary we had covered the last time that we had taught, because we were in an online environment, we used what was available to us through the technology and had the students use a feature called “interactive whiteboard” to draw their pictures, while those who were guessing used the public chat feature, or if they were brave enough came on mic to give their answers. The students in the class had lots of fun while participating as they got to work together, building off of each other’s answers, and they were able to express themselves to a certain degree. 

I have found that letting the students have a more active role in their learning, through class discussions, group activities, they are able to practice their speaking and get feedback for pronunciation, as well as form connections with their peers. 

During class lectures, I like having the students form groups and discuss the topic, through this group work, I can listen to there discussions and gage how well they have understood the topic and how their pronunciation is coming along as you can’t focus on one aspect of the language, but need to practice the different elements. I have also found that incorporating matching exercises or quizzes made on sites like “Kahoot” allow the students to engage more with the material and to evaluate where the class is sitting. 

My beliefs for education come out in the activities that I plan for my classes and how they are executed in the class, whether they focus on learning individually or working with a group, I believe that students should be able  work in different types of environments and as a teacher, I should do my best to simulate different environments they may encounter as they learn English and continue to use it.