Elementary Teacher Essay

The name of the teacher interviewed is Lucila Reed. She has been teaching Mathematics in the grade school level for over 5 years at the local public school system. She teaches to culturally diverse classes where many learners have English only as a second language. The teacher has responded extensively to each of the four developmental domains. According to her responses, the most emphasized domain in her class is the cognitive/intellectual domain. She described Mathematics as a â€Å"content-extensive† subject wherein a majority of the input has to come from the teacher. She claimed that this was quite different from other subjects such as English or Social Studies, where the students can be left to figure out certain lessons on their own. However, she did say that the subject was also all about equipping students to be able to answer questions on their own. Hence, she believes in a â€Å"standard formula† that involves thorough and clear explanation of the learning content followed by enriching activities that would promote the retention of the content. On the physical level, she explained that she constructs easy-to-play games around the lesson she is teaching to get students who â€Å"thrive on action† to realize that â€Å"math is fun too. † She claimed that these activities have been successful in getting such students to participate. Also, such activities help learners who only have English as a second language by giving them opportunities outside of the standard pencil and paper to understand and apply the lessons explained. She observed that ESL learners are able to make use of the activities as â€Å"interpreters† that â€Å"fill in the blanks left by their inefficiencies in English comprehension. † Lucila expressed her deep concern for such learners and declared that they should not â€Å"have to learn English along with Mathematics in a Math class. † Hence, she provides measures so that the lesson would be as comprehensible as possible for all her students. She also periodically allows students to work in pairs or small groups. She reflected that she believed students sometimes worked better when they have peers talking to them about the lesson. She concluded that â€Å"learning is more fun when you can share it. † Her technique is to pair students performing poorly with those performing well to work on a couple of problems. To ensure that both of them would be working, each student would have to explain one problem that he or she had solved and the pair’s grade would depend on their collective performance. Hence, those who are performing well cannot simply answer both questions for those who are performing poorly and end up explaining the answers so that their partners would understand better. Lucila expounded on how important she believes the emotional domain is to the development of her students. According to her, teachers should not only facilitate content learning but also â€Å"emotional learning. † She mentioned encouragement to be â€Å"one of the teacher’s greatest tools† towards helping their students achieve emotional development. She further explained that by encouraging students who make mistakes to try again, the determination of such students are built up. This building up of determination makes students spend more time in answering more difficult problems and give them better satisfaction once they have found the correct solutions. Over time, she claimed that students who are adequately motivated would not be easily daunted by making a mistake but would rather use what he or she has learned from the mistake to find the correct answer. Although the interview conducted did not include any questions regarding the subject’s academic background involving the developmental theory, it seems from her responses that she is very well versed with it. Her classroom method focuses on cognitive development because that is the nature of her subject. However at the same time, she does not fail in including the other domains of development and makes sure that her students develop holistically with respect to the subject matter. She places appropriate emphasis on other domains such as physical, emotional, and social. Although such domains are not explicitly integrated in the content, they are instead assimilated in the way that she delivers instruction and in her methods of reinforcing learning. She provides diverse activities to suit students’ different needs based on their individual differences and then provides support to students who require more attention to make certain that they are also able to keep up. These are explicit examples of the teacher conducting activities that address the different developmental domains. In can be expected that Lucila’s students are able to absorb and retain lessons effectively because of the support activities and systems provided. Clearly, the interview has revealed that Lucila Reed is an effective teacher who is aware of the different developmental domains and makes use of such awareness adequately in her classes.