Lisa Delaney - Teaching With Technology

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Department of Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese

Teaching Philosophy

From the time that I was a little girl I have aspired to be an educator.  This is a dream of mine that has been strengthened with each passing year.  As an elementary student I paid close attention to my favorite teachers’ techniques of instruction, archiving in my mind those from which I learned the most.  At that time I dreamed of teaching elementary students and hoped to be as creative a teacher as those who had presented education to me with the creativity necessary to motivate young learners.  As I advanced in years and entered middle school I discovered the areas of education that most interested me: language and literature.  I knew that I wanted to teach middle school so that I could teach classes more focused on the subjects which interested me the most.  Maturing into a young adult in high school, my desire to be an educator was strengthened by the level of expertise that many of my teachers displayed in both the subject area and ability to manage a classroom.  The dynamic that high school students bring to the classroom fascinates me.  Each grade represents a new level of maturity and, along with it, comes a new teaching strategy.  Realizing this, I became interested in teaching at the high school level.  My desire to teach the level that I was currently in continued through college.

At this point in my life I have had the opportunity to teach Spanish Language at the college level at The Pennsylvania State University, and English Literature at the high school level at Colegio Nueva Granada in Bogota, Colombia.  I think that it is important for adults and young adults to see the practical application of the material they are learning in order for it to make a positive impression and to motivate them to continue on in the field.  As a teacher of language, I find that students are most responsive to the types of affective activities in which they communicate personal information to and receive personal input from other students.   Because of this, it is important to create a relaxed environment in which the students feel free to express themselves in a language in which they are not yet proficient.  An essential component of a comfortable learning environment is that students must not be burdened with the fear of making a mistake in front of their peers, because errors in speech are part of the process in learning a second language.  I try to get my students to know each other in order to create a high level of comfort in the classroom by creating many activities in which they work in pairs or in groups exchanging personal information.

Not only do the students need to feel comfortable with one another but also with the teacher.  I find that the more open and honest I am with my students, the more they feel comfortable with me and respect my position as their teacher.  It is important to remain consistent in classroom management and class procedures so that the students know what to expect from their teacher.  My students can expect to be offered respect from me and constant encouragement.  I keep a positive attitude in the classroom in order to increase motivation and when appropriate, make light hearted jokes that pertain to the information at hand, so that the students feel that learning can be enjoyable.

In the second language classroom, the teacher should take on a facilitative role, rather than an authoritative role.  To this end, in my classroom I create real life scenarios in which the students exchange information in the target language. For example, in a unit where the students learn food vocabulary, I would have the students in groups of three or four act out a scene in which they are ordering food in a restaurant in Latin America. Another example in which the students exchange more personal information is simply posing the question about what the students plan to do over summer vacation and having them share and compare their plans with one another. This not only personalizes the conversation but it also serves the purpose of practicing the future tense. This inverted role where the students exchange information with one another rather than the teacher transmitting information to the students is elemental in language learning because it provides the students with more opportunities to actually practice speaking in the target language.  Student centered classrooms are effective in achieving this goal, and also in allowing the students to take responsibility for their own education.

As I mentioned earlier, the level that I desired to teach moved up with each year that I moved up in the educational system.  Similarly, my interest in technology in teaching has been increasing alongside the constant advancement of technology in today’s society.  Modern students are accustomed to being plugged in to technology at all times – they have information coming at them from television, they can access the internet at home, school and in public places, their cell phones keep them connected to all parts of the world, and when they are on the go, their ipods are plugged into their ears.  It is so important that teachers recognize students’ affinity for audio-visual input in order to maximize the type of instruction that students will attend to.  It is through technology that teachers can present information to students on a level that they are familiar with.

In my classroom, I use PowerPoint on a daily basis (see my Teaching Samples page for a selection of PowerPoints I have created).  Through PowerPoint I can organize information clearly and set the pace of the class.  As opposed to writing on the chalkboard, PowerPoint displays information instantaneously, maximizing instruction time. In addition different fonts, colors and pictures can be used to appeal to the students’ senses and to make the important information more salient and engaging. Additionally, the internet is an available and engaging resource to which links can be placed in a PowerPoint. Links to YouTube provide examples of popular culture that engage the students and motivate them to learn the language, for example linking to a music video in Spanish incites interest in the student to learn the lyrics to the song, therefore, expanding their vocabulary and cultural awareness. (See my Student Resources page for internet links useful for learning Spanish.)

The Pennsylvania State University. Copyright 2008.
Last updated on: April 28, 2008 6:49 PM
Email: Lisa Delaney