Teaching Philosophy My teaching philosophy has been shaped by the Pedagogists John Dewey and Paulo Freire.

The two things that the ideals of these two pedagogists have helped me understand are the importance of experience and social consciousness. I strongly believe learning lays on how you experiment the world and as long as you evolve through what you live, your learning evolves as well; that is the reason why I find important to give myself and my students opportunities to try new things. Also, I consider education being the way to lead to change, is education (which embraces teaching and learning) what must push us to question the world around us and ourselves and help us provide solutions to the conflicts and issues we find in our community. In my classes, I look for opportunities that come from simple discussions were I question my students to provide reasons for the decisions they make, as well as encouraging them to question the decisions I make and the materials I provide. I also like to work together with my students to find different positions of a giving reading and to give them the space to identify possible issues found on them; asking first, what would be a possible solution to those issues giving my students the chance to use their problem-solving abilities and therefore giving them some sort of power inside the classroom which will also give them confidence about themselves and their opinions . A second language brings us opportunities to know people from different cultures and understand the things they can teach us. Thats why, as an English teacher, I see the role of my job as a providing tools for my student to connect with different people and so they will gain new experiences which will give them tools to see things from different perspectives and have different points of reference that will take them to question their realities. Some tools I explore with my students is the reading and doing small research about the styles of life on different countries even when these are countries where people do not use English as a second language; by this, the students gain some knowledge of different cultures and they experience using English as a bridge to get to know other peoples realities. One example is when I tried a small cultural festival in my classroom. Students were supposed to look about any country they wanted and research their traditions using English as a tool to explain to everyone what they find out. Students were really encouraged as they were free to look at any country they wanted. They also found out facts that they didnt know about those countries and changed the way they

looked at them. By the end we made a discussion in what traditions of their own culture they would show foreign people and why they thought it was important. The main goal I want my students to achieve is that they can use English as a way of enriching their experience and so opening their minds to new ways of thinking by connecting with people different from them. I understand this may be a challenge that I will face by taking advantage of the technologies we have access to nowadays implementing them in my classes as tools of connection with the world, as well as bringing my own experiences with other cultures inside the classroom. To assess their improvement I will try to give them informal assessment in the way of talking to them explaining their weaknesses and strengths; and formal assessment based on tests, interviews, and oral presentations. In the future I see myself doing research to improve my teaching with collaboration of other teachers as I believe learning develops better when shared with other people. Also I want to keep helping my students and myself to try new things, know new people which will bring us new ways of seeing the world.

Zulma Rueda