Jordan Northcott 1

APLNG 493
Extended Team Teaching Reflection

The most important part of the teaching process, especially when given the time, is

reflection. This does not always occur, teachers live busy lives and often it is within the small

moments they might look back - on the drive to/from school, as they wind down for bed or

perhaps while eating a quick lunch between classes. With this extended team teaching project, an

opportunity is given to observe and think about the very process of teaching.

To start, after the partners, class and topic had been introduced my brain already was

trying to come up with what I would do. Never had I taught an English Composition course, nor

rhetorical devices and argumentative writing, however, I had done that very thing in my own

composition course freshman year. That was my base inspiration, the past, which would be

unsurprising to those in pedagogical fields of study. Unfortunately for me, my composition

professor was underwhelming, and quite dramatically stopped teaching halfway through the

semester. But, I did remember doing the same type of tasks in high school, the use of video

examples and looking at different texts to determine which rhetorical devices were being used.

That was the first step, mentally plotting what could be done, the next was to write it down. In

both my notebook and a word document, I sketched out a rough outline of how the lesson could

proceed. With input from my groupmate Haifa, we came to a first draft. We knew for certain we

would do an introduction (see what the students know), then move on to some orienting activity -

gathering both their attention and focusing them on the lesson. We agreed on having a

presentation and finally some sort of ending activity, but that was all that was discussed

originally. It was not until after the meeting with Sally, the professor we were working with, and

the observation did we fine-tune our outline.

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The observation was helpful, especially in settling any nerves that I had, as the students

in this 015 English Composition course acted just like my previous students in my student

teaching. This group was still teenagers after all, and that meant I knew how to better interact

with them. I was afraid that with an older group, it would be more intimidating and I would feel

out of place, and this group was in my comfort zone. Observing the class beforehand was helpful

because it allowed my partner and I to see how the students interacted with each other, their

professor and the content - what could be expected during our lesson. This particular course

always allows technology, for writing notes, reading online and even in-moment translations.

The first real visual change I found in an ESL course, was this very heavy inclusion of

technology to better help the students in their learning. This moment already changed my mind

about how I would teach ESL, remembering that students being able to use translators or

dictionaries can be helpful to their learning. The other difference noticed was the PowerPoint. It

was fairly short, highlighting only the key points of the lecture and not made the focal point of

the lesson. Instead, the professor focused on their readings and a class discussion, having the

students use the language actively in multiple ways. The observations made already had me

thinking about how to adapt our current lesson outline, such as thinking about how the students

could be divided for a group activity.

Before the lesson was finished, the meeting, to check on progress, and the practice

teaching was extremely helpful in continuing to refine it. The practice teaching was the most

beneficial to me since it allowed real interactive feedback. Plus one idea that we had was to bring

in two versions of the final activity, this was good because then we got immediate and direct

feedback on the versions. Which was the outcome I was looking for because it allowed us to
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APLNG 493
modify and make changes to the activity based on those suggestions. It felt wise while doing the

practice teaching, to take advantage of it as much as possible.

The actual lesson went fairly well, at least to me it did. My partner was unexpectedly late

so I had to begin without her. This was nerve-racking but thankfully I had the opening activity

and had sent the PowerPoint to the professor the night before. The opening activity involved

group work, and there was no real care in how students were grouped. It was more based on

students' current sitting location since the class was not full and since students kept arriving late.

Also, I did not move to the back group while they were doing the activity, that was because the

front group was actively engaging with me it felt like that was more important to focus on. Plus

this was not meant to be a long activity, just something to orient the students to the lesson topic

and try to bring in past knowledge. This activity also “leads” the students into the presentation,

although I think the transition between the two was a little rough. Eventually, my teammate

arrived, and she integrates into the lesson fairly quickly. After the presentation, we do the

main/final activity, which was having the students find what rhetorical devices they could use in

their argumentative essay for class - what everything in this course is building towards.

There are a few things I am remiss about, especially the lack of educational paraphrasing

in the lesson. I was able to do it in the practice teaching but did not do it in the actual teaching. I

think this is partially because it is something I have to actively think about, it does not come

naturally. There were definite moments when I could have used it. Another thing is when a

student asked “what does rhetorical mean?”, my mind went blank. It was a really great question,

and I feel as if I missed a good teaching moment by asking the professor for help. As

recommended in the stimulated recall, I could have used the other students and seen if any of

them knew what it meant. However, if this had been my own class, I was not being observed and
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APLNG 493
none of the other students had an answer, I would have felt okay looking up the definition.

Especially because I could still use that to teach since rhetoric is the act of persuasive speaking

and writing, I could have asked students about ways they have tried to persuade people before.

This question was timed right before the video example for logos, and then after watching the

short clip not only could we have talked about logos but the idea of rhetoric and persuasion could

have been brought up. Later on in the class, after the main activity began, I did give that student

a definition of rhetorical. This is another thing I regret because after looking up the definition, it

would have been fine for me to pause the students and explain it out loud. Especially since by

that point, we had gone through all of the devices and they could have brought better insight into

how writers and speakers persuade people. My biggest regret for this whole lesson are those

moments when I did not address the entire class but there was space for me to do so. Those were

all in-flight decisions, and I think they reflected my lack of teaching experience really well. Not

that what I did was necessarily bad in the end, but it could have been much better.

That is not to say I disliked everything I did in the lesson, there were moments that I

think went well. For instance, when a student would arrive late I handed them the opening

activity, even though we had moved on from that already. My thinking behind this was even

though they missed the explanation and actual group work they still would have some sense of

familiarity when it was brought up later. Another thing I think was good, was how I would

explain the media or certain references used in class. A lot of those references were heavily

related to U.S. culture, especially from the early to mid-2000s, something that I did not know if

the students knew. There was a moment when I used the English idiom, “tug at their

heartstrings”, which I also explained, the thinking was the same as the previous one, I was not

sure if the students had been exposed to it before, but in case they had not, it was explained. The
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APLNG 493
final part of the lesson I think went well was my constant and active use of embodiment. Since

this is an ESL course, I felt it would be helpful to use gesture and movement along with the

spoken language to give as many context clues as possible. Admittedly though, it is already a

habit of mine to gesture and move when speaking, but the reasoning behind it is the same -

although not usually because my conversation partner is an L2 English speaker.

Overall I felt as if the explanations of concepts went rather well, they were still moments

when students got a little confused or needed another explanation. But they seemed to grasp the

concept of rhetorical devices and argumentative writing effectively. I think it would have been

nice to sit in on a class after the lesson had taken place, just to see if appearances matched reality.

It was clear to me by the end of this project, that having a multi-step process for lessons is

beneficial in the long run. It is not something I can see myself doing for every lesson, I would

burn myself out that way, but I do think over time this will become an intrinsic process. Right

away after finishing the lesson, I was already thinking about the moments that I would change or

that I really liked. This continued as I reviewed the footage from that day, watching and pausing

at random moments to think about “why did I do that?”. When teaching an ESL course, it feels

as if you need to be more aware of how you present yourself and the material. Not that it would

not benefit other courses, but when teaching students who are not from the same background as

your own - perhaps linguistically and culturally - it is important to remember how much goes

into language. The sociocultural aspects that are often overlooked by native speakers, how

different spoken language is from written and understanding that your students will always point

something out you might not have thought about - to name a few. Being able to observe and

reflect upon my teaching process was truly insightful, it really allowed me to see just what is
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fixated on and what is overlooked when I plan. Sometimes neither is apparent until after the

lesson is over, which is why it is so important to reflect and reason with yourself.