“I touch the future I teach”, the last was stated by Christa McAuliffe, when she was selected by NASA

to become the first teacher in space, little did she know that the Challenger mission would fail in
1986. Her mission was never accomplished: to teach a class from space to her 2 nd graders, however,
her legacy encouraged many teachers around the world to improve teaching in the sake of students.
As Christa, the job to achieve success in the classrooms had included many insights, ideas and
concepts. Cooperative learning arises as a powerful technique to promote interaction and educational
socializing among other benefits. EFL learners benefit from the implementation of Co-Op Learning
principles and techniques. Teacher roles include creating a highly structured and well-organized
learning environment, working as a facilitator, the teacher must move around the class helping
students as needs arise, fairly different than the traditional teacher-fronted lesson. CL considers
materials just as important as the previous elements, since they create opportunities for students to
work cooperatively, they should be e specially designed for CL learning such as jigsaw and
information-gap activities. Cooperative Learning has been proven to be effective for all types of
students, including academically gifted, mainstream students and English language learners because
it promotes learning and fosters respect and friendships among diverse groups of students. In fact,
the more diversity in a team, the higher the benefits for each student. Peers learn to depend on each
other in a positive way for a variety of learning tasks. Cooperative Learning activities promote peer
interaction, which helps the development of language and the learning of concepts and content. It is
important to assign students to different teams so that they can benefit from English language role
models. They learn to express themselves with greater confidence when working in small teams. In
addition to increase vocabulary, students benefit from observing how their peers learn and solve
problems. This prevents what typically happens if students select their own roles - the same students
wind up performing the same tasks.

I support the facts that teachers are in charge of providing an environment in which learners
understand their role in language acquisition. Cooperative learning is a strong tool to accomplish the
previous. Foreign language instructors could ensure the appropriate implementation of CL
principles and techniques by analyzing the context where the class develops and the information
needed to have a vision about the students and their backgrounds. Mr. Reid, the teacher of the given
case, flawed when using a game he assumed students knew, which meant that he should have
researched about his students’ preferences and organization. This is not exclusive from novice
teachers, even experienced educator might fail when applying a technique or using material that is
out to date or out of context. Besides, following the CL principles:
1. Positive Interdependence, 2. Face-To-Face Interaction, 3. Individual accountability, 4. Social Skills,
5. Group Processing, classroom tasks will become more successful, contrary to Mr. Reid’s task, size of
sub-groups, instructions and organization of the class might be solved and avoid failure.

I also consider that the application of Co-Op Learning impacts teaching praxis greatly. Observing
cooperative learning groups in action allows you to effectively assess students' work and
understanding. Cooperative learning groups also offer a unique opportunity for feedback from peers
and for self-reflection. Using scaffolding or diminished responsibility as students begin to understand
concepts would help teaching. Becoming a facilitator is a role that not many teachers are used to
follow; on the contrary, many prefer to lead the class even if that means controlling everything. By
allowing groups to grow in responsibility as times goes on the classroom will become more
productive. When a teacher includes different types of learning scenarios, CL appears easily and
produces higher order reasoning. Furthermore, classroom tasks vary creatively as in laboratory
work, study teams, debates, writing projects, problem solving, and collaborative writing, providing a
rich environment for learning.