While in the TESOL practicum course I conducted a total of four formal observations using specific observation tasks. Two of these observations were on a class that I knew I would eventually have to teach as a substitute teacher as part of my practicum teaching requirements; this class was ESL writing 408b for matriculated students and their teacher was John Wood. The other two of these classes were my own Speaking and Listening classes at the English Language Institute which I observed by videotaping myself. All four observations involved taking notes and writing less formal reflections than this. All of that data contributed to this final observation reflection. While some similarities existed between both of our classes, I mostly observed differences in teaching style and the way it affected student teacher interaction. Moreover, these observations made me feel more confident that my teaching style was appropriate to the class I was teaching at ELI, but more aware that I will have to be flexible when confronted with new situations in the future. I cannot expect what worked in the fall of 1999 at ELI to work everywhere.

The differences between John Wood’s class and mine have something to do with differences in our personalities and the type of relationship we try to establish with our students, but mostly they have to do with choosing a teaching style that is appropriate to the situation. It would be absurd for me to claim that one method was better than the other, because our subject matter and students were very different. I am not a proponent of "a one best teaching method" notion; there is no one best teaching method. What works well for one teacher in one situation may not work well for another teacher in different situation; this difference in effect isn’t to be blamed on the teacher but is merely just a reality in the complicated world of teaching. One cannot simply prescribe some sort of activity and expect its result to be uniform once human factors are taken into account. Human behavior is much too complex to ever be so easily manageable.

The first observation I made on John Wood’s class was following the task of analyzing the way he posed questions, how those questions were phrased, and how it affected the response of the students. On this task I was really impressed with how well John Wood phrased his questions and on how deliberately he managed a balanced student participation. For example, he would pose a question before calling on a student so all students knew that they might be called on and must attend to the question mentally. He didn’t accept answer grabbing though, and this was crucial for managing the particular mix of students he had in that class. Half of the class were Asian women who typically might be less aggressive about answering a question but are just as capable of giving an intelligent answer. These personalities often get drowned by European, Latino or Arabic men who answer quickly but don’t necessarily know the answer any better than the women. In such a case it is important that the responses must be deliberately elicited equally from all. Careful control of the classroom interaction this way allows for equal participation that keeps all students more attentive. This made me wonder about my own classroom management. Am I allowing certain students to dominate? After observing John Wood I was more conscious of this aspect of my own management, thus, I believe I learned something valuable from this first observation.

In the second observation I made of John Wood’s class I chose what I believed to be a rather whimsical and irrelevant task - observing classroom affective factors (i.e., seating, heating, lighting and acoustics). I thought it might be worth a try and could be interesting since I had never done such an observation before and would have to teach in that classroom soon. I realized that the classroom as a physical place was important to teaching so I conducted the task imagining both what it would be like to be a student in that classroom and what it would be like to be a teacher in that classroom. What I found was actually very interesting.

The affective factors were terrible. John Wood was not really to blame for this; mostly it couldn’t be helped. For example, a heater was making one side of the room too hot while the other side remained cold. Furthermore the same heater was making a loud rattling noise right next to me that made it difficult for me to hear the instruction. Since the room was extremely overcrowded, I had to take a seat on the side of the room. But, I wasn’t the only student there; I was pressed up against another student in the same situation as I, and neither of us could see around the big A.V. cabinet between us and the teacher. From this vantage point I noticed that a lot of space was being wasted in the front of the room by an excessively large table that I would later find (when teaching) posed an awfully inconvenient physical barrier for the teacher when walking back and forth from the blackboard to the students. The result of this was that all of the students were pressed up against the back and side walls of the classroom, much like victims of a firing squad. When comparing this to my own classroom I must admit that my room is small and has no windows, but the seating arrangement is very comfortable. This is partly on account of the fact that I don’t have a big space for myself in the front. I spend most of my time moving around the students as they sit in small groups. This has something to do with the choice of activities I do in a communicative learning classroom for speaking and listening.

The first observation I did on my own classroom used a task in which I examined the interactive decisions I made while teaching and how it affected my overall class in terms of learning and cohesion. This is something I was beginning to be concerned about because, as I said before, I had some students from cultures that participated much more vocally in class than others and I was afraid that they were getting me sidetracked too often. When was their question an student initiated opportunity that shouldn’t be neglected and when was it a distraction that took away from my overall class? During the first class activity, a small group discussion, I got tried to step in only for repair of communication as an assistant of sorts, but I eventually got pulled into a one-on-one discussion with a single student. I still don’t know what I should have done in that situation. Later I began another activity. It was intended to be a review, assessment, reinforcement activity of all the phrases words had learned and I had given them on a review sheet in the last class. Before I could begin, the students asked me if they could ask me some questions first. This turned into a very long digression from the lesson plan yet upon reviewing the tape I believe it was a very good interactive decision and also shows me that I can usually trust my students input and feedback on my classroom management decisions. It was a good use of class time. This and other instances of interactive decisions based on input from my students reassured me that things were going well in my class. I felt the rapport seemed excellent and my students’ participation was productive. In comparison to John Wood’s class, I feel that much of this was on account of the fact that I had a small class and could therefore afford to be more flexible and attentive to the students’ unrestricted participation. Once again, situation dictated what was appropriate and what was advisable in one class was unnecessary in another.

The final observation I made on my class was just a simple record of our rapport. I wanted a videotaped sample of our excellent class rapport. This video record was somewhat sabotaged by my students’ misbehavior on that day. They were very excited because it was nearly my last day, so they were acting extremely humorously and we were all having way too much fun. While this shows good class rapport, I’m not sure it is an accurate record or even that it would look good to a potential employer. The prime example of their misbehavior was that while I recorded their small group interaction, they improvised a mischievous dialogue. This dialogue was about me and my decadent lifestyle. The story had me going out with them to a strip club and loosing control over a naked dancer. In the story, I started a fight and embarrassed everyone by stealing money, swearing and assaulting women. The story was cute to say the least and it does show that our class atmosphere encouraged creativity and humor, but I wouldn’t use it to impress an employer.

From my comments on my self-observations you can probably tell that I am quite proud of myself for having established such good class rapport, but moreover, I am grateful that I had the opportunity to teach such a wonderful group of students. The mix of personal chemistry and communication styles in my class made all this possible, and with a larger class or different students and different subject matter wouldn’t have had the same good rapport and interactivity. While these observations reinforced my conviction that I was teaching my class "the right way", they also helped to make me realize that there is no universally right way across all situations. Classroom interaction and learner behavior are too complex to be predictably managed through blind prescriptions.