Having been a former ESL student, I understand how important it is to have teachers you can trust and look to for guidance. It can be frightening being thrust into a new world, but the right teachers will walk with you as you take your own steps into the unknown. Just as Mrs. Salazar and Mrs. Martinez did so for me, it is my goal to do just the same for my students. As a teacher, my role is not to instruct my students on how to learn, but rather to help them discover how they best learn. When students leave my classroom, I want them to know that their learning does not have to pause—that they have the ability to continue, having acquired the confidence and the resources to facilitate their own learning. It is a lifelong journey.

As such, my students are also my classmates—my co-learners. Whether through personal skills or through simple interactions, we all have something to teach one another. In my classroom, we all function as a large unit, working to better our individual learning while supporting each other. My students’ role is ultimately to be in charge of their own journey, knowing where and how to find the proper resources and how to facilitate learning under any instructor, not just me. The success of our class is not dependent simply on the materials that I teach but also on the shared experiences that we foster. After all, language and communication are not solitary practices; they require multiple participants.

In language learning, accuracy measures how correctly we use language while fluency measures how well we communicate that language. Both are important and it is the eternal dilemma. I am proponent of fundamental accuracy but a greater emphasis on fluency. I believe that fundamental understanding of grammar and vocabulary is undeniably important to successful learning, but correctness is not the be-all and end-all. Just as important are the understanding of culture and the strategic cooperative use of language. The world we simulate in our classroom is not the same as the one outside. Thus, I gauge learning on how well my students can use the communicative strategies they acquire inside the classroom to function outside the classroom.

Because the ultimate goal in English learning is communication, my teaching methods follow a mostly Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, encouraging active use of English both inside the classroom and out in the real world. In today’s world, technology has risen to the forefront of many facets of our lives, and I believe it is important to utilize this to its fullest extent. We have the great fortune of living in an age of endless information, all available at a moment’s request. My class incorporates technology to deliver authentic language learning experiences to my students. They will have ample opportunities to explore real language through such technologies as corpora and videos and through personal interaction with each other and with native speakers. It is important to a maintain a consistent use of the language so that confidence can be built.

When students finish my class, I want them to be able to look back at themselves when it all began and realize that they have learned more than they thought possible. Then they will be ready for what is out there.