Reflecting on my TESOL Internship

I cannot believe my field placement is coming to a close! I have had a very rewarding semester working with ESL kindergarteners in Chinatown. My TESOL class that supported my internship enabled me to reflect upon and critically examine my teaching with the consideration of pedagogy and theory in the TESOL field. I came into the semester very intimidated by the class because I knew that we had to complete a huge paper that focused around three areas that we wanted to explore and improve upon in the field. Despite initially feeling overwhelmed by this daunting task, supporting my internship experience with a plethora of pertinent research and theory in the TESOL field has been infinitely meaningful in my quest for professional development throughout this teaching experience. Through the insights and findings I extensively reviewed, I endeavored to better my teaching practice for the specific students I taught. I chose to frame my efforts to better serving my young Chinese students around three themes that resonate with my teaching context. Because I taught this same population of students last semester, I was very familiar with their needs; both needs that I felt I accommodated last semester and needs that I finished the semester feeling I could have more deeply supported. Consequently, I created my three themes based on aspects of my teaching I yearned to improve from last semester.  To begin this semester, I dove into research to better enable me to dedicate my lessons to helping my students flourish in their public schools in both academic and social realms.

These themes are: 1. How can I create a multicultural classroom that reflects students’ cultures and prior experiences to boost their confidence and foster positive self-identities? 2. How can I tailor my lessons to accommodate my older, advanced student and my younger, lower-level student to ensure that I support their diverse needs. 3. How can I create effective classroom management that fosters student self-exploration but maintains control and keeps my young learners on-task and engaged? 

I used this semester to explore each of these themes from pedagogical, linguistic, and sociolinguistic frames of reference in order to gain a broad perspective of how these themes influenced my teaching goals. I am infinitely grateful for this opportunity to critically examine my teaching practice during this experience because teaching young students reflects my aspiration to teach a similar population in the future. My goal for my students this semester was to create and implement lessons that were best tailored to the diverse needs of young learners in an ESL context. My efforts to explore and implement successful methods to accommodate the diverse needs of young ESL learners through the lens of my three themes enabled me to set a strong foundation for ways I can most effectively support the needs of young learners in the future.