Who I Am And Who I Want To Become?
I have to say that I am a little bit nervous about taking this course online. I have always felt that I am a visual learner and that I need someone in front of me, physically teaching me the content of any subject or any skill that I want to learn. So, I guess I am going to embrace this challenge that I have set in my life and allow the opportunity to learn new skills unknown to me at this point.
To begin this entry of experiences and reflections, I will start by talking a little bit about what our first unit in this course has been.
As a step one, we all had an opportunity to introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about our background. Who are we and what are our projections for the future?
For me, I have to say that the desire of becoming a teacher has always been on my "to do" list. At one point I tried to go for my Education degree, but as you might know, life gets on the way, however, who said that I could only teach children? For the past couple of years, the idea of teaching adult EAL came in such an urgent desire that I finally made the decision this year to enroll myself in the TESL program at the University of Winnipeg and just go for it.
At first, I felt like I was underqualified for this program and many times I questioned myself if I had made the right decision for me. However, after reading the comments of other classmates and reading about how they also felt with all the technology and the demanding tasks of the course, I felt no longer alone, and my attitude to learning got stronger. Having said that, this unit recommends the formation of a Professional/Personal Learning Network (PLN) for extra support and the accessibility of additional resources for our learning in this course.
In my case, I began opening a Twitter account, and I started following ESL teacher in Canada - I would like to expand this to the world later on. I also opened an account on Tutela and Zotero which by the way I have found them very interesting and useful. I am not sure how to get the best of them yet, but I am sure as I go I will be able to do so.
Also, the textbook assigned for this course is Teaching by Principles- An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy by H. Douglas Brown and Heekyeong Lee. The corresponding chapters for this unit were chapter: 1 "Getting Started" and chapter: 8 "Cultural and Socio-political Aspects."
I must admit that due to my late registration and the delayed setup of my student account, I didn't have the opportunity to read these two chapters as I had to catch up with other reading materials for other courses. I hope to go back to those chapters once I'm done with this course.
Please see below a few links related to this unit.
At first, I felt like I was underqualified for this program and many times I questioned myself if I had made the right decision for me. However, after reading the comments of other classmates and reading about how they also felt with all the technology and the demanding tasks of the course, I felt no longer alone, and my attitude to learning got stronger. Having said that, this unit recommends the formation of a Professional/Personal Learning Network (PLN) for extra support and the accessibility of additional resources for our learning in this course.
I must admit that due to my late registration and the delayed setup of my student account, I didn't have the opportunity to read these two chapters as I had to catch up with other reading materials for other courses. I hope to go back to those chapters once I'm done with this course.
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