Who is Miamo Lydie ?

 

My Teaching Philosophy

Me as a Teacher

In my view of teaching, I cherish learners’ autonomy.  Henri Holec was the first person who came up with the term “learner’s autonomy”, and he defined it as “the ability to take charge of one's own learning." (Holec, 1981).  It was later defined as “a capacity - for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action” (Little, 1991). Erik and Erickson (McLeod, 2018) identified 8 cognitive stages of development, with stage 2 (autonomy vs shame) being the age at which a child starts claiming and exercising his autonomy, as teachers, we should be conscious to let them have it.  I believe that every child has a gift within, and something to offer to the world. As a teacher, it is my duty to believe in my students, regardless of their situation, and to help them discover and develop their inborn gifts and talents, so as to put this potential at the service of humanity. At the beginning of my teaching career, with no formal teaching training, I had no specific strategy in place in order to achieve this goal. I just followed my intuition, how I would feel if I were in my student’s shoes, and acted accordingly. But since I started my graduate program in education, in Teaching English to Young Learners, I came across these wonderful terms: “learner’s autonomy” “affective filter” and “scaffolding”.  To me, it was something unheard of, in the learning context that I have experienced as a student and the teaching context where I worked as a teacher. I saw learner’s autonomy as the only way to show my belief in my student, trusting in them and making them take the necessary risk, and encouraging trial-and-error. This was the only means to boost and preserve their creativity and eventually unleash their full potential. Today, I am conscious that I must always strive to create a student-centered learning environment that is comfortable, where I make them take responsibility for their learning and growth, while I assume the role of a scaffolder.

            I also share the view of constructivists like Jean Piaget, who point out that we learn by interacting with our environment. That is why I quickly adhered to the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) system that is currently being launched and adopted in many innovative educational systems. It aligns with sustaining the student’s creativity. I see this as a great opportunity to teach the student in context and be in contact with real-life experience, where they are able to, see, hear, touch, create, observe and analyze the result of their own work. This gives them a sense of fulfillment and boosts their imagination.

            As much as I want to respect my students’ autonomy, it is my responsibility to provide them with appropriate materials that represent diversity, because we all are evolving in a multicultural world with different people and cultures. So, the student should be aware of and prepared to eventually accept, this variety in a classroom context, and placing diversity of choices before them will help them take mature decisions, not only in class but in society and in life in general.

Finally adopting a reflecting mindset and constantly putting it to work after each lesson and throughout my teaching career is crucial in achieving my great dream as a teacher. Reflection is like the thermometer that will indicate to me the state of health of my teaching. It is not enough to feel good or bad at the end of a lesson, I must go deeper to understand what made my lesson good so as to bring me so much or any satisfaction, and see how I repeat it, consciously adopt it, or even improve on it if necessary. On the other hand, if I have a bad feeling about my lesson, I need to identify what went wrong so as to revise or completely remove it from my teaching practice, especially with the particular student at hand. It is a fact, that reflection will be a continuous enterprise not only as a teacher towards my lessons and my relationship with my students but also as a human being who wants to preserve a good relationship with other fellow human beings.

            In a nutshell, I am convinced above all that to exactly identify what my students want or need, I must be able to achieve that connectedness with my students that characterize every good teaching and learning environment. Have that capacity to reach their inner person, as (Parker Palmer,1998) called “the student within”, to create that rapport for the flow of healthy communication. I must be attentive to details, be able to listen to their silence, and interpret their unspoken words. Today I am aware that learner’s autonomy is not only letting the learners choose to want they want to study and how they study it, but it is also equipping and empowering them to become independent learners and quickly take responsibility for their own learning.

 

Making Learning a Continuous Enterprise

I love to take on challenges because I prefer to see the opportunities behind the risks and not the risks behind the opportunities. The more challenging something is, the more I am ready to go the extra mile to understand. I want to learn from everyone, irrespective of age, especially from children, because their naïve opinion or comments about the world or their immediate environment throw new light on the way I see or should see life and things in general as an adult. This inspires me a lot.

            On the other hand, although I cannot know all the answers while preparing my lessons, I make sure I do thorough research on the materials I intend to use, so the students will not surprise me with questions. I become humble enough to learn from them when I don’t know the answers to their questions, and as a teacher, I am not ashamed to say I don’t know. I believe it is a sign of greatness that may help to encourage my students to take risks to answer questions, and still be okay if they are wrong and think something like “if even the teacher doesn’t know, what about me?”. What is important for me is the willingness to know, and be predisposed to receive knowledge or even go for the knowledge This is the message I want them to always remember during my lessons. So, we learn every day, and ignorance and mistakes are welcomed in my class because they form the basis on which I build my lessons for the mutual development of the teacher and the students. One of my teachers Mrs. Matysik who identified my goals from my description of myself commented:

“ I think the content corresponded to your goal of becoming a role model for your students, showing them that a person learns all the time, and uses resources, and when he/she doesn't know something, he/she does his/her best to find the information, assess it critically, select what is relevant and incorporate the new information into their knowledge, sometimes even at the cost of changing their mind about something, because the new information contradicts some old views.”. It is exactly with this humility that I embraced the teaching profession, and this is precisely how I see myself.