Interview a teacher in the field
1. What are the teaching strategies that you often use? Why?
“Primarily, visualization helps the students understand how their schooling applies
in the real world. Another one is cooperative learning and group sessions in which it helps
in their academic performance and increase in their motivation, and strengthen the self-
esteem. I also use inquiry-based instruction and modelling. I serve as a guide to the
students through questions posed and through inquiry, students actively discover
information to support their learnings.”
2. How do you improve your learner's cognitive and metacognitive skills?
“By engaging the learners in physical activities, it is indeed beneficial for the mind,
health and cognition as certain hormones are increased during exercise. This improves
memory retention as researchers gathered findings that exercise has positive effects on
memory function. I also make sure there are activities that engage students to
communicate and improve their people skills so that they are more sociable and free from
stress.”
3. How do you reinforce learner’s participation in class?
“Forming a group in which they create specific art and other form of dance could
really help in their participation. I also look for ways to cultivate group activities, which
bolster peer-to-peer learning. In addition to increasing classroom participation, it can also
improve learning outcomes, as many studies have shown that peer-to-peer-learning plays
a strong role in overall learning.”
4. How do you address student's misbehaviors?
“I discipline with encouragement and kind words much more often than rebukes or
reprimands. My goal is to help students feel good about themselves and their behavior in
the classroom. I try to set a positive tone and model an appropriate response. I give the
misbehaving student a chance to respond positively by explaining not only what he or she
is doing wrong, but also what he or she can do to correct it. Most especially, I model the
behavior I expect from my students. ”
5. How do you design your learning activities?
“I design learning activities where students are active, where they are sharing,
discussing, creating, constructing, reflecting, applying. I keep the activities structured so
that students are able to explore, explain, extend, and evaluate their progress.
Furthermore, I also capture learners' interest, intrinsic motivation and foster enjoyment in
learning.”
6. How do you make the most of the learner’s peers and parents?
“Parents as the primary resource in the education of their children is best
exemplified in home learning. Home learning is the activity, or set of activities, that parents
and family members may engage in to help their children succeed academically. This
partnership role between parents and/or family members and schools may have the
greatest impact on achievement especially now that the students are studying in their
homes. Involving parents in home learning activities vastly improves students' productivity
that is why I really communicate progress and support from the parents.”
7. How diverse is your classroom?
“Since diversity inside the classroom is always present because of course every
learner comes from different culture with different beliefs, opinion, values and religion and
even how they think in solving a particular problem or situation. They have their own
strength and weaknesses. That is how diverse my classroom is.”
8. How do you accommodate such diversity in your classroom?
“Well, I do differentiated instruction and include diverse learning materials to
accommodate the needs of my students. From our first meeting, I always encourage them
to introduce themselves to me and to their classmates. I make sure that everybody will
be coping up with the lesson and as the learning process goes, as much as possible there
will be no barriers that may hinder them to learn. Like for instance, making some activities
that everybody can perform and enjoy while learning specially that our subject is MAPEH.
Also, being sensitive of what I am saying because my students comes from different
backgrounds and I might say something that will surely degrade someone or something.
It’s a must to always be attentive and careful.”
9. How do you assess your learners?
“I assess my learners by giving them assignments for them to study in advance
about our next lesson. As much as possible, I prefer group works because in that way
they can interact with their classmates and it is a way to practice socialization which is
important. Creating rubrics when we are conducting activity especially when we are
performing our P.E class. Lastly, giving them exams every end of the semester to access
how far they have learned and also to know if where part of the lesson they needed help.”
REFLECTION
During the interview, we realized that as a future educator there are still a lot of
things for us to learn. Being a teacher is challenging that it could drain your energy down
to the last drop. However, through using good teaching strategy, we could maximize the
usage of our time and effort. In that manner, all the resources we have will be used wisely.
There were questions in the interview that made us think of how we could deal with our
students in the future. Questions like, "How do you address students misbehaviors?; how
diverse is your classroom?; how do you accommodate such diversity? How do you
assess the learners?". These questions did not just help us to guide the interview process
but also it opened an idea to think about future possibilities. Like, when we become a
licensed professional teacher, how will we manage our class? We realized that we need
to gather more useful skills and gain more knowledge and experience, then we will be
ready and worthy to be a teacher.
After the interview, we get to know how teacher Peñalosa manage her students
inside the four corners of the room and even in the distance learning that we are now
practicing. She is already 14 years in service and she encountered different classroom
setting as well as different kinds of learners and that made us admire and looked up to
her.
DOCUMENTATION
An interview via video call to Mrs. Jean Peñalosa, a MAPEH teacher at Sagkahan
National High School.
Prepared by:
Olaya, Brexio
Labaclado, Julie-Mar V.
Remandaban, Angel Mae G.
BPED 2-7
