Myself

I am Marilu Rodrigues, an English teacher, who is teaching at Makassed Lala School. This is my second year at Makassed School. Last year I taught elementary classes while this year I’m teaching intermediate ones. Since I started teaching, I believe that teaching offers a bright and rewarding career for those who can meet the intellectual and social challenges of the job.

As an experienced teacher, I am expected to use best practice to help students learn essential skills and attitudes. After seventeen years of experience. I found out that teachers could be effective by using the following four higher-level attributes; such as personal qualities, broad knowledge base, a repertoire, and social justice.

In my opinion, it’s very important for a teacher to have personal quality because that allowed me personally to develop authentic human relationships with my students, parents and colleagues and to create democratic, socially just classrooms for children and adolescents.

Another vital trait is to have positive dispositions toward knowledge. I had commanded of at least three: broad knowledge bases that dealt with subject matter, human development and learning, and pedagogy. After years of teaching, I also commanded a repertoire of teaching practices known to stimulate my students’ motivation, to enhance my students’ achievement of basic skills, to develop higher-level thinking, and to produce self-regulated learners.

Last but not least, I considered that effective teaching requires careful and reflective thought about what I’m doing and the effects of my action on students’ social and academic learning.

I consider learning a lifelong process, and we who are teaching should diagnose situations and use professional knowledge to enhance student learning and to improve schools.

In brief, my overview of my teaching is to have the ability to help students see patterns where others see only confusion; an ability to foster genuine creativity in students, and the ability to work with other people in work groups that decide for themselves how to get the job done. I think that teachers won’t come to school knowing all they have to know, but knowing how to figure out what they need to know; where to get it, and how to help others make meaning out of it; we must think we are to help others think for themselves, be able to act independently and collaborate with others and render critical judgement as Arthur Wise (1995), the president of (NCATE) has stated about knowledge and skills:
“Teachers should be able to use strategies for developing critical thinking and problem solving. They should be able to use f formal and informal evaluation strategies to ensure continuous student learning.”


I also liked what was mentioned by the philosopher (Jean Jacques Rousseau) about learning and education:

“Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovoked, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.”

In conclusion, I should frankly mention that I do really enjoy teaching for I like to deal with children and adolescents. I must emphasize two important things related to my career as a teacher: Knowledge and passion for my subject and ability to relate to student allow me to have fun in teaching. The most significant reason is that teaching, according to me, is a profession that fulfills many aspects in my life!