An observation report of a faculty member - Essay Example

Let me start off the relating of my observations by first describing the kind of class that I was assigned to observe. While I was hoping to be assigned to a highly exciting and eye-opening class, I was instead assigned to an ESL class for college graduates who had very little English writing skills. The students in this English 100 class were all college school students who, due to one reason or another, managed to graduate from high school with very poor English writing skills. Gaining acceptance into college may have meant that they had the chance to get a better future by completing all the levels of their education, the problem of their English writing readiness became quite evident when they enrolled int heir regular English classes.

Due to the serious nature of their problem in expressing themselves in English, these students were advised to enroll in remedial English writing classes. The aim of this type of class, is to improve their English writing abilities to the extent that the student will be able to clearly and legibly express his thoughts and emotions through his writing. The professor in this class was a female in her late thirties who felt that the best way to help her students learn how to write in English was to ask them to engage themselves in a writing activity that they could relate to.

Which is why she asked the class to write their personal memoirs. Since her students came from highly diverse backgrounds, their English writing skills seemed to copy the kind of background they were exposed to when they tried to express themselves through writing. However, the teacher, who used the “Daniel Stiepleman Cluster” in her class, managed to divide her time equally among the students and in the process, managed to help them improve their writing abilities in the process. She did this by clustering her class in groups that came from similiar backgrounds.

This way the students shared a set of low writing skill problems that she could help them address by group rather than individually. In doing so, she allowed the class members to become teaching aides in a way because they found themselves in the unique position of helping one another improve their writing ability through consultation with one another. By asking the students to write their own memoirs, the professor actually encouraged the students to express themselves by discussing a topic that they are highly familiar with and therefore, gave them the confidence to take a chance upon which they could express themselves in English as best as they could.

Since this was a basic English writing class, I observed that most of the students had apprehensions about how they should write about themselves and how they might be judged for their written grammatical mistakes. This was a point of nervousness for the students that the professor was able to diffuse by encouraging them to write regardless of their mistakes, which she would help them correct later on. It was her belief that unless they took a chance upon expressing themselves, they would never be able to do so.

Part of her encouragement and genius in teaching came from the way that she effectively utilized the clustering technique in teaching the