Teaching and Learning Styles

My name is Anna, and I live in Huntington Beach. I am currently pursuing my Master's and Single Subject Credential in Spanish. I spent three years teaching Spanish at the elementary and middle school level at a private school in Costa Mesa, and have been a long term substitute Spanish teacher at a public high school for most of this school year. Languages are my passion, and getting to share them with students is the best. I am energetic, creative, and try to make class fun for everyone.

All of my classes are made up of diverse student populations, and it can be a challenge creating activities and implementing a plan that works for everyone. The key is differentiation (and time management). I think that I intuitively knew to differentiate instruction, even before I knew that "differentiation" was a word. It just makes sense to expose students to content material in a variety of ways.  In my classes, we learn through singing, drawing, writing, acting, speaking, and listening. My current classes are block periods, and are 100 minutes long. That's a lot of time to spend trying to engage high school students! Because of this, I make sure to divide the period up into social and individual activities, movement games and seat work, speaking and reading, using multimedia and drawing. Hopefully, by the end of each class, I have provided an opportunity for each individual student to work with the material in a way that makes sense for him or her.

I don't really like taking personality tests, because I feel that my responses change depending on what I'm talking about. For example, I am social when I'm in front of my students, but tend to be more of an introvert as soon as I'm off the clock. I DO, however, see the value in comparing my teaching style to my students' learning styles. For example, I do not learn through music, but I know that many of my students do, so I need to make sure I don't teach only in the ways that are comfortable/helpful to me.

Metarasa Personality Test

According to the various personality tests, I am surprisingly well balanced, which I would imagine is a good thing in a teacher. I am either an ESTP or a ESFP, but my answers fall right along the center line, meaning I am not an extreme of either option. As an ESTP, I am an "action oriented problem solver," and "enjoy getting things done, and taking action to solve practical problems," whereas as an ESFP, I am an "action oriented people person" (Team Technology, 2017). Both of these descriptions make sense for teaching; teachers need to be flexible, action-oriented, but also have people skills. I had similar results from the other surveys.

This year, I have a lot of high achievers and low achievers in my classes, with a relatively small percentage of my class lying in the middle third. I also have a lot of boys, so the energy level is pretty high. Due to this, I need to make sure I include activities that are action-packed and let students use their bodies and socialize. I also have a lot of studious, focused students, who are detail-oriented and crave structure. For these students, I need to make sure that I use graphic organizers, present the agenda every day, and show charts and graphs. Although my personality test indicated that I am fairly well-balanced, I do think that I tend to work better with the energetic boy personality type. Therefore, I need to make sure that I also provide structure for my students who don't learn the same way as these boys. I am also more action-oriented, rather than someone who thinks for awhile about something before acting. However, many of my students need time to contemplate an assignment before beginning. I can cater to these students by mentioning an assignment well in advance of the actual due date, so that these students can think and plan. I am also open-minded about assignments, allowing students to take an idea and run with it in whichever direction they prefer. However, I have a lot of students who are uncomfortable with this, and would rather just have black and white instructions, so they know exactly what I want and expect from them. To help with this, I can create assignments that offer choice, with detailed expectations for each option, and then also include a "make-your-own" category for those students who are comfortable thinking outside the box.

The most important thing I learned from thinking about how my personality will affect my relationship with my students and how I teach is that I need to be flexible and make sure I don't only teach in a way that matches my particular personality.


References
*Team Technology (2017). Metarasa personality page. Retrieved from https://www.metarasa.com/mmdi/questionnaire/