Doug McClure

Philosophy of Teaching and Learning

As a secondary German teacher, providing my students with an international education is

the guiding principle of my practice. Because of rapid technological advances, the opportunities

for connection with people and cultures around the world grow with each passing day, so I view

the reality that many Americans leave high school without having made significant progress in

learning a new language as a significant missed opportunity. I envision the students in my

German classroom going on to pursue study abroad, taking employment in German-speaking

countries, and using their language skills as a key to connections with people, texts, and ideas to

which they would otherwise not have access. Therefore, I see my classroom practice as an

essential part of my students’ journeys towards more fully understanding the deeply diverse and

nuanced world which exists outside the classroom. To provide this understanding and prepare

my students to work across physical and social borders while learning about German language

and culture, I will regularly prompt my students to reflect on their own identities and how those

identities relate to, spring from, and challenge those connected to their mother tongue and the

country in which they live. I believe that secondary World Language teachers can and often do

provide the link between a student in the United States and the rest of the world; I wish to

provide that link and make my classroom an open-minded environment in which students can

consider new concepts and reconsider the ideas which are most familiar to them.

To create the most learning possible, I believe that the classroom must be a truly

collaborative and reciprocal space. We can all learn from each other—students from other

students, teachers from their students, and students from teachers—and, in the same way, we can

hinder each other’s learning if we are not properly and intentionally collaborating. Every
participant in the classroom makes an important contribution to help learning proceed smoothly,

and I will clearly establish and model behavioral norms at the beginning of each term and

throughout the run of the class to demonstrate how each participant in the classroom can

positively contribute to their learning environment. I will actively communicate with students

about their needs and desires, and I will work from this foundation of understanding to

continuously express my expectations for student effort and achievement in the classroom. In

turn, I will put in the effort to build deeply engaging lesson plans which allow students to

challenge themselves, reconsider their beliefs about language learning and world cultures, and

work collaboratively with other students in small groups and across the class to make new

knowledge. When I make expectations clear and provide these opportunities for peer-to-peer

interaction within such a space, I believe that deep learning and collaboration will absolutely

come as a result; this collaborative learning is, in my mind, the best way to utilize the advantages

of the classroom context.

I believe that the World Languages classroom should be an experimental space in which

students feel free to express themselves even when they are not sure that what they say will come

out perfectly. Every time a student in a language class speaks in the target language, they are

taking a risk; failure is much more likely than in the student’s native language, and the fear of

failure often prevents students from participating. To work through this fear and build

confidence, I will integrate daily speaking activities in every level of the German classroom, and

I will work to provide students with ample opportunities to trust their prior knowledge and use it

in classroom activities. Part of creating such a space is building a truly cooperative environment,

but the way in which I assess and provide feedback on student performance also plays a critical

role. In this context, I will focus primarily on the growth of individual students while keeping the
standards for spoken language as a reference; by judging student performance first against their

previous capabilities instead of purely against set standards, I believe that I will encourage

progress for students at all levels. While providing feedback and interacting with students in a

conversation context, I will not correct every single mistake that students make in real time, as I

know that individual moments of incorrect performance do not indicate a lack of competence.

Instead, I will work to prompt students to elaborate and maintain their train of thought in the

target language while correcting noticeable patterns of mistakes. In this way, I can help provide

students with the skills to improvise and expand upon their thoughts in the target language while

keeping their focus on generating new thoughts instead of perfect grammar or sentence structure.