DISCIPLINE

This word comes from the Latin “discupulus” that means “student” and is directly referred to the way teachers treat students. After 1960, British and American research showed that mistreating student –as it was formerly practised– did not contribute, at all, with students’ learning. However, teachers must be ready to deal with problem behaviour and keep discipline in the classroom. Three different approaches are found then:
I. Knowing the reasons for such conduct, that is, why it occurs.
This is the stem of the behavioural problem and probably the most important aspect to consider, since it may counter the behaviour from the very beginning. Some of the factors that allow for the appearance of problem behaviour are:
Family
Education
Self-esteem
Boredom
External factors
Teacher’s behaviour.

II. How to prevent problem behaviour.
Prevention is always better than the discipline cure. Some actions that a teacher might take are:
- To create a code of conduct where students participate in conforming the rules that everyone agrees to follow.
- To keep his/her and his/her students’ interest and enthusiasm, professionalism, and rapport when performing classroom activities, since a busy and interested student, that considers him/herself responsible of his own learning process is less likely to display problem behaviour.

III. The third approach is the reaction to the problem behaviour that already arose, which some teacher may not know how to handle. Some guidelines are:
- Act immediately. The longer the behaviour remains unchecked, the worse and the more difficult to solve it gets.
- Focus on the behaviour not the pupil. Remember that it is the behaviour that matters and you do not need to humiliate student to make that clear.
- Keep calm and take things forward. The objective is to continue in order to get to another stage in which the conduct disappears.
- Reprimand in private. The student in question will be more likely to admit his behaviour if he is in a confident environment and if he is in a classroom with 30 of his/her classmates.
- Use colleagues and the institution. The teacher may find people with more experience that might have dealt with those matters before and their knowledge would probably be exactly what the teacher needs.

Demo class

In my demo class, I could notice some of my weaknesses as well as strengths. For instance, in the planning of the lesson I realized that I lacked of the knowledge of the technical names of the activities and stages through which a class goes on. Therefore, I had to make my planning supporting every activity with a sheet of paper containing the skills and microskills of reading. However, and no matter the planning, there were still some aspects that I could have covered more efficiently like the use of strategies to check the language of a text without having the students read aloud the material.
On the other hand, I could also notice that I already have some of the necessary abilities for a teacher to perform in a classroom, such as: control of the students facing teaching-related situations, logical sequence of activities and clarity of the tasks that students are expected to carry on.

First impresion on ELT

At first sight, ELT looked to me as a huge task because it demands knowledge of too many things regarding not only the language itself, but also human behaviour. I thought that 5 years were just too little to learn and absorb the knowledge and skills that any teacher should have. Sometimes, I was even doubtful that I could someday do what the people from which I was been taught were doing at that time.
However, after about four years striving to achieve the objectives in every subject that I have been offered, I begin to believe that mastering ELT is possible and that the enduring commitment that it requires is not anymore beyond my reach. In fact, I dare to say that there are enough tools and available information –for anyone with the minimum requirements– to successfully perform ELT.

About me...

My name is José Eleazar Roa Mayora. I was born in 1978 and I am the only child of a marriage that lasted 21 years –my father died in 1995–.
After eight years working as a mechanic (1995 – 2002), I decided to take one step further in my professional development by starting a five-year career at the university. This was not my first attempt; the first one was in 1997 when I took Systems Engineering at Universidad Nacional Abierta, but at that time it was impossible for me to continue.
However, the experience and the knowledge that I acquired during those years allowed me to qualify to go in the Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas and study to become a Teacher of English.
I know this change was totally opposite to what I did before, but I think of it as something that was necessary in order to be in the place that I am now and what happens to me today will be necessary to be in the place that I will be in the future.
As part of one of those experiences that I have been going through during my career, I created this blog which is intended to advertise and promote the use of strategies to succeed in the task of teaching; more specifically, in English Language Teaching (ELT).

The Bicentennial Man

In ELT, it is essential to resort to whatever effective method available to acomplish the task of conveying meaningful learning. One of this methods is the use of literary works in which one can find situations similar to the ones found in reality, so that they might be discussed for developing a critic view in the learner.
Here is part of an essay related to Isaac Asimov's The Bicentennial Man, which is a novel and short story easy to read but still full of meaning.
The story begins when Andrew Martin (an android) is in an operating room talking to a robot surgeon who cannot really determine whether Andrew is a robot or a human being. This situation arose because apart from having a humanlike appearance, Andrew was able to give orders when the only ones who could do it were human beings. Thus, it was this unique feature what made Andrew a little more human, he even asked the surgeon “It does not offend you that I can order you about? That I can make you stand up, sit down, move right or left, by merely telling you so?”. It is clear then, that Andrew’s view of ‘being human’ was a matter of being aware of its existence, a sort of superiority similar to the one humankind exerts over animal life; superiority that allows the former to control the latter.
In time, Andrew developed prostheses that replaced one by one his internal works for artificial organs with the exception of the brain. Those organs were so similar to the ones human beings have that people transplanted them whenever they need to replace a kidney, a heart or whatever sort of organ they needed. Andrew then, being a “human de facto” –“treated as a human being by robots and human beings”–, wanted to become a “human being de jure”. That is the reason why he started a series of pleas in the world court that “established the fact that no number of artefacts in the human body causes it to ceased being human body” leaving the brain –organic cellular for human beings and platinum-iridium positronic for robots– as the only difference remaining between mankind and robots.
The point was that cells ceased functioning, but positrons were everlasting and mankind would never accept an immortal human being, “since their own mortality is endurable only so long as it is universal” not particular. The issue was then solved when Andrew arranged to cease functioning through the operation above mentioned at his two-hundredth anniversary, being then declared a bicentennial man just before his departure. It is possible then to notice how mankindness was defined as rational beings in control, evolved to those who can be free, continued with the ones who have an organic cellular brain and finally, those who die.
The story of the Bicentennial Man can be thus classified as Science Fiction because of the effects that the development of robotics had on the society present in the account, which had to create new laws and social rules to cope with the new issues that Andrew gave rise. The encyclopedia Encarta (2006) remarks that idea when it states that Science Fiction deals with the particular and general effects that scientific changes have on people and society.
In this portrayal of reality, Isaac Asimov also depicts human fear of machines in a satirical way. For example, when the bullies attacked Andrew, George stopped them by assuring them that Andrew was going to fight back –though it was impossible for Andrew due to its first law– which was enough to make them run away; Andrew even wondered “How can they fear robots?”. Later on, the same aspect is highlighted when the Congress people were still suspicious of robots –they had “the fear of setting an undesirable precedent”– suspicion to which Andrew asked “Even now? He was clearly puzzled by this unfounded human fear.