Applicable Positions
– ESL Lecturer
– Secondary school teacher
– Educated Spoken Arabic tutor to foreign people
– IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC, KET
Certification
1- License of Education , Faculty of Education, South Valley Univ., Egypt
2- Postgraduate MED TESOL ( 120 credits Diploma for 9 months in the College of Humanities and Social Science in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages- full time) Edinburgh University, Scotland, United Kingdom
3- Certificate of International Education Experience from Gracemount High School , Edinburgh , Scotland , United Kingdom
4- ICDL Certificate, version 4, 2008
5- IELTS test band score 7 ( in October 2015)
6- certificate of Videoconference teacher training workshops for one year
Experience Details
Current job:
Secondary school teacher in Ismailia STEM School, A school of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (full time)
ESL lecturer in the British Institute in Egypt (part time)
Date of appointment as a teacher: 17/10/2000
1- 14 years teaching English in Egyptian secondary schools
2- 4 years teaching experience in Business English to groups of engineers, accountants, bankers and businessmen in the British Institute in Egypt (I did 16 weeks course in Business English, full time in Edinburgh university, Scotland, United Kingdom)
3- 4 years experience in teaching Modern Standard Arabic, Educated Spoken Arabic, and Illuminated Spoken Arabic to native speakers of English online ( via Skype video chat and EZ meeting software ) ( I did 4 months course in Online Language Learning , full time in Edinburgh university, Scotland, United Kingdom)
4- 5 years experience in teaching Modern Standard Arabic, Educated Spoken Arabic, and Illuminated Spoken Arabic to groups of Americans, British, Kenyan, Turkish, and Indian people living in Egypt, lectures took place in the British Institute in Egypt.
5- 12 years experience in translation work in the British Institute in Egypt, the main translation documents were for the Real Estate, official documents to be presented to consulates and some books in economy.
Skills Resume
Currently I work as a secondary school teacher in Ismailia STEM School, A school of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and I work in the British Institute as ESL lecturer , besides I teach Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Educated Spoken Arabic, and Illuminated Spoken Arabic to groups of Americans, British, Kenyan, Turkish, and Indian people living in Egypt.
I have a good deal of experience as for sustaining the conversation with slow learners to encourage their involvement in the educational process. I have a calm, approachable disposition and I always aim to put my learners at ease in all aspects of their learning process. I am patient to a far extent with students, I am also friendly, responsible, reliable, punctual, presentable, as cool as a cucumber, is said to be a good egg, modest, laid back, down to earth, innovative, proactive, organized, neat, quiet and considerate. I have designed lots of schemes for helping talented students to improve rather than suffering from fossilization.
I strongly believe in a student’s ownership of their own learning. I guide them with hands-on experiences and numerous practices with me. I therefore respect everyone’s unique learning style and pace, with patience and flexibility. My teaching method is first of all to put my students in a comfortable situation and to understand for each person the real needs. I don’t use only books, but create also by myself schemes and exercises that can help my students. Furthermore I like using newspapers, magazines, song lyrics, movies and everything that can help my students not to get bored but to have a closer relation with the new language in all its aspects. I tend most of the times to help my students to become autonomous learners as this is the corner stone for a rosy future of self learning. I also tend to download materials from the internet to use in classrooms.
I am extremely sensitive to the apprehensions and needs of learners embarking on the language learning path, and aim to teach successful lessons using methods and techniques that differentiate between varying learning styles. I manage and monitor all lessons carefully in order to assess learners’ progress and provide support where necessary. I always provide feedback in a positive and professional manner and highlight areas for improvement in a non-critical way.
I spend my time other than teaching classes in Class Preparation, Making Teaching Material, Translating, Meetings, open house, Entertaining students, Camping, and any other action or participation in or outside school. At most times, I like to attend a conference or visit another school for professional growth and development. I prefer to remain fully committed to the pursuit of a lifestyle, on and off the job, consistent with the mission and vision of the School I work in. I strive at all times to understand, appreciate, love, and serve the students entrusted to me for instruction, and I will to the best of the my ability provide for their fullest intellectual, physical and emotional development. I maintain a classroom atmosphere that is conducive to learning and this includes maintaining a professional appearance. I also cooperate to the fullest extent with my fellow workers and School administration. I consciously promote unity and harmony among the staff and faculty of my School.
I use innovative teaching aids like graphic organizers, concept mapping, mind mapping and others. I enjoy using ready-to-use graphic organizers to help children classify ideas and communicate more effectively. I use graphic organizers to structure writing projects, to help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research and brainstorming. Graphic organizers can help motivate, increase recall, assist understanding, create interest, combat boredom and organize thoughts. Graphic organizers are valuable tools for teaching and instruction. Unlike others, graphic organizers demonstrate flexibility and endlessness in choices of use a common trait is their ability to show the order and completeness of the student’s thought process – how s/he understands becomes clearly evident. Using a range of graphic organizers shows both the close-up and the larger picture. Since many graphic organizers use short words or phrases, they are ideal for many types of learners. Besides I use the other ordinary aids available like the Over head projector, slide projector, video projector, data show, cassette recorder, the smart board, flannel boards, flash cards, whale charts, real objects and other visual and auditory aids.
Adopted teaching strategies
I am fully aware of most unique and up to date teaching approaches, techniques and methods; I combine and use many of these such as the Montessori approach, Spaced Learning, Suggestopedia, Desuggestopedia, Flipped classroom, collaborative learning, Immersion Education, peer tutoring, A teacher for the day, and many others. I advocate collaborative learning (co- operative learning) and ongoing assessment to a far extent and mainly I prefer the Montessori approach in teaching as I encourage self-directed learning. The first female doctor in Italy Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was focused on teaching the students ways to develop their own skills at a pace they set, which a principle Montessori was called “Spontaneous self-development”. I like that approach as it concentrates on quality rather than quantity. Montessori was exiled by Mussolini mostly because she refused to compromise her principles and make the children into soldiers, her principle was ” Educate for Peace”, that’s why I guess we may get better civilized citizens out of applying that approach in our schools. That approach highlights the following:
1-The observation of the child (in the prepared environment) as the basis for ongoing curriculum development.
2- Small, child-sized furniture and creation of a small, child-sized environment (Microcosm) in which each can be competent to produce overall a self-running small children’s world.
3- Creation of a scale of sensitive periods of development, which provides a focus for class work that, is an appropriate and uniquely stimulating and motivating to the child.
4-The importance of the “absorbent mind”, the limitless motivation of the young child to achieve competence over his or her environment and to perfect his or her skills and understanding as they occur within each sensitive period.
5- Self- correcting “auto-didactic” or self teaching materials.
Some people criticize that approach saying that Dr Maria spoke and wrote about the effects of the method on children, rather than about the method itself so they allege that the Montessori method is attached to the personality of Dr. Montessori herself, but I think if we just apply the overall concepts of that method we are to a achieve a hotshot success with our students, they are as follows:
1-Inner guidance of nature: all kids have inherent inner directives from nature that guides their true normal development. The Montessori Method involves a curriculum of learning that comes from the child’s own natural inner guidance and expresses itself in outward behavior as the child’s various individual interests are at work.
2- Freedom for self-directed learning: the Montessori Method respects individual liberty of children to choose their own activities. This freedom allows children to follow their inner guidance for self-directed learning.
3- Planes of development: the natural development of children proceeds through several distinct planes of development, each one having its own unique conditions and sensitive periods of acquiring basic faculties in the development process, they are:
A- The first plane (ages 0-6) involves basic personality formation and learning through physical senses.
B- The second plane (6-12) involves learning through abstract reasoning, developing through sensitivity for imagination and social interaction with others.
C- The third plane (12-18) is the period of adolescence growth, involving the significant biological changes of puberty, moving towards learning a valuation of human personality, especially as related to experiences in the surrounding community.
D- The fourth plane (18+) involves a completion of all remaining development in the process of maturing in adult society.
4- Prepared environment: the right precise conditions around children allow for and support their true natural development. For young children, the environment must be prepared in this way by providing a range of physical objects that are organized and made available for free, independent use, to stimulate their natural instincts and interests for self- directed learning.
5- Observation and indirect teaching: the teacher’s role is to observe children engaged in activities that follow their own natural interests. This indirect teaching to control the environment, not the child, contrasts sharply with the ordinary teacher’s role of implementing a pre-determined curriculum. For example, a Montessori method class has the teacher resolving misbehavior by refocusing the child to some positive activity, rather than engaging in ordinary system of rewards and punishments.
6- Normalization: when children respond to materials with deep concentration, a fundamental shift in their way of being occurs, changing from ordinary behavior of fantasy, inattention, and disorder, to a state of profound peace, calm and order within their environment. Dr Montessori referred to that change as “Normalization” and the new emerging children as “Normalized”.
7- Absorbent mind: the young child (0-6) has an absorbent mind which naturally incorporates experiences in the environment directly into its world basic character and personality for life. This mental faculty, which is unique to young children, allows them to learn many concepts in an effortless, spontaneous manner. It allows them to undergo the key phenomenon of normalization to return to their true natural development. After the age of six, this absorbent mental faculty disappears.
8- Work, not play: children have an instinctive tendency to develop through spontaneous experiences on the environment, which Dr. Montessori referred to as “work”. In this sense, the children’s normal activity is attached to reality in the present moment, rather than idle play through such means as toys and fantasy.
9- Multi-age grouping: children learn from each other in a spontaneous manner that supports their independent self-directed activity. The ordinary Montessori classroom therefore consists of a mixed-aged group, such as 2-6(primary level) or 6-12(elementary level).
To sum up, in the Montessori Method, a lesson is an experimen6al interaction with children to support their true normal development. With materials, these le4ssons primarily aim to present their basic use to children according to their own individual interests. These lessons are therefore given in such away that the4 teacher’s personal involvement is reduced to the least amount possible, so as not to interfere with the child’s own free learning directly through the materials themselves. I really believe that we as teachers can adapt that method to the Arab environment to get mentally and emotionally advanced students.
In fact and In general, I like my Students to enjoy a friendly learning atmosphere where my students and I work together in interesting and challenging class activities. I do feel to a far extent that a collaborative learning environment promotes deeper and achievement-oriented approach to learning, which I prefer to other approaches of learning.
As far as I’m concerned, I advocate Immersion education which typically uses a range of teaching approaches to enable students multiple avenues for accessing and understanding what is being taught. Immersion education uses some strategies, widely used by immersion educators to get great results as follows:
• Explicit instruction introduces new language with individual and choral responses from the children.
• Second, Guided and independent practice gives children the opportunity to review and apply the knowledge and skills that have already been introduced to them.
• Also, Small group instruction, where my children work in small groups for extended learning opportunities, scaffolding activities and differentiation.
• Inquiry and problem solving, where my students are given hands-on tasks to test and apply what they have learned and to promote student interaction and conversation. To my mind, that is a terrific one
• Technology integration, where children use adaptive learning software such as Dream box to meet their individual learning needs and assess their progress.
• And last, Specialized language acquisition strategies, where I use a range of skills to ensure material is accessible such as: body language, hand gestures, visual and audio aides, real life props, context, clear enunciation I mean articulation, pronouncement, pronunciation or vocalization , and a range of questioning techniques.
Besides delivering the knowledge and skills of English to students, it is my aim to inspire and motivate my students to learn the language. I believe most efficient language learning happens through students’ own engagement and self-effort.
When I teach, I often use visual aids, such as software tools or videos and make students feel that learning English is interesting. I also make a lot of effort to interact with my students throughout the learning process, For example, I tend to design conversation on various topics of daily life and the rotation of the roles of reading, composition writing, feedback and so on. The one of most important principles of my teaching philosophy is to cultivate my students’ communicative abilities and to teach them to use the English language in real life.
It is said that a Language is the carrier of culture; you see culture and language cannot be separated from each other. As the students’ knowledge develops, I will introduce some famous English literature. This will help to develop the skills of reading. Reading is a very important method for improving pronunciation, vocabulary and meaning in context.
Language immersion programs present a range of opportunities and challenges for me. I welcome the opportunity to create an immersive language environment in which my students are able to achieve high levels of proficiency and fluency in the target language, and to learn academic as well as everyday language.
In this way, successful immersion teaching is the pinnacle of good instruction. Its form of interdisciplinary learning exemplifies the possibilities of education in general. By their very nature, immersion programs demonstrate the interconnectedness of all knowledge and experience.
Immersion teachers must first clearly understand what content must be taught at each grade level. I need to be familiar with “comprehensible input,” which emphasizes that students should be exposed to new words and patterns in contexts that facilitate comprehension and assimilation. I should consistently weave together familiar language with new words and information, so that students continually develop their language proficiency. In this way, language acquisition in an immersion program closely mimics the natural learning curve for a first language, in which a child is constantly prompted to assimilate new language and meaning from unfamiliar words and expressions. Immersion also includes more elements of discovery- and inquiry-based learning than do other kinds of instructional practices. Students must constantly and consistently decipher inferences and context clues.
THE TOP FIVE IMMERSION TEACHING SKILLS
1. The ability to use visuals, gestures, body language, expressions, modeling, and movement to complement verbal cues. For students to learn a new language in meaningful contexts, I must use every instructional strategy available to them, including the use of actual objects (realia), pictures, videos, and gestures to express meaning. This will allow students to develop comprehension without direct explanation.
2. The ability to motivate students to stay in the target language. Students who are still new to English should be encouraged to respond to teacher prompts and questions in Arabic if they are not yet able to express themselves in English. As students get older, however, they should be increasingly encouraged to use English exclusively in all of the classes conducted in Arabic. As students progress toward higher levels of proficiency, they should also be discouraged from mixing the two languages, and urged to stay in one or the other language, as appropriate.
3. The ability to ask open-ended questions. Effective teachers, no matter the subject or setting, steer clear of questions that elicit only “yes or no” answers. Instead, they challenge students’ thinking, nudging their higher-order cognitive skills and giving ample time to articulate each response. In immersion classrooms, it is especially important that teachers encourage students to give longer and more varied replies. For instance, they can ask students to expand upon or support their answers with examples or evidence. Following up in this way by me helps students practice a wide range of expressions and to keep incorporating fresh words and patterns into their productive repertoire.
4. The ability to regularly assess students’ comprehension and skills development. I need to monitor students’ understanding through questioning techniques and formative assessments. I should also be consistently pushing students to use new words and expressions, more complex language structures, and more culturally appropriate language in their interactions and responses. I should encourage students to use more specific vocabulary, as opposed to generic expressions, as they continue to develop their skills.
5. The ability to think strategically about the various types of student interactions and to vary them, promoting a dynamic learning environment. I last can mix the following types of interactions: teacher-students, student-student, whole group, and small groups. In small-group and project-based settings, I need to carefully evaluate the makeup of the various groups. Each student should work with various people in the class, but there should also be opportunities for long-term and ongoing student interactions.
References
Available on request
