Teaching Philosophy

My basic goal as a Spanish Professor is to teach Spanish with a communicative approach and to emphasize both the language and the cultural diversity of the Spanish speaking countries. I feel that I have accomplished many goals as an educator since I started working here at TCC. The best examples of this are exemplified by the two Student Choice Awards that I received (April 2005 and April 2006) and by the wonderful evaluations that I got from my students. Being a good professor is my primarily goal and I feel very gratified to be recognized by those I’m trying to instruct every day. Teaching for me is a passion and not just a job!

My teaching philosophy and methods include but are not limited to:

· Integrating oral, listening, writing and reading skills.

· As an educator I try to be a facilitator for language learning. My philosophy is that language classes should be “student centered” rather than “teacher centered”

· Emphasize communicative skills giving students as many opportunities as possible to use the target language. I include several oral activities such as pair works, group works, dialogues, role-playing, games, interviews, etc.

· Integrating new technology as an important component of language teaching and learning.

· Planning classes taking into consideration student’s diverse backgrounds, needs and interests.

· Making the Hispanic language and culture “live” by bringing to class regalia, pictures, arts and crafts, videos and other relevant materials.

· Inviting native speakers to class so that students can interact with different Spanish speaking people and be exposed to different Hispanic cultural backgrounds, accents and dialects.

· Writing tests and quizzes that are appropriate for each specific class. Take into consideration that each class is different, has a unique “personality” and different needs.

· Teaching not only language and culture, but also raise students awareness of the importance of learning language in today’s international community.

· The classroom should be a learning community: Spanish students often have different levels of previous language instruction. As a professor, I try to use these differences in a positive way. I try to make students with different levels of Spanish learn from each other and help each other, making them work in pairs and groups.

· Developing more Online and Hybrid courses

· Include new tools to make every Online Course a state of the art course by incorporating video, audio and online conferencing

· Being not only a professor but also an advisor to my students. I want my students to see me as the rounded person that I am and not just as a Language Professor. In this context education becomes more personalized, more authentic and more meaningful!