My Teaching and training philosophy

As a Basic Military Training Instructor, I had to train students from various cultures and backgrounds. During this process, I had to be very creative and innovative to ensure that my students understood what they had to know about the Naval culture and what it meant to be a sailor. I experienced that students really only understood what they had to do when they were given the opportunity to practice what they were taught in class. Students were often afforded the opportunity to use own innitiative to accomplish a task given. English is the official language being used in the South African Navy.

As a Naval Officer, I was afforded the opportunity to be deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo for approximately eight months. There, I had to work and communicate regularly with the Congolese community and with military personnel from all over the world. The military personnel included members from Ghana, Pakistan and the United States of America. This meant that I had to respect, understand and empathise with all the different cultures that I encountered.

As I experienced, students from different cultural backgrounds bring their own knowledge and life experiences to the classroom setting. Teachers should take the time to learn more about the background, values, histories, practices, and traditions of these students and their families. By doing this, they have the potential to change how instruction is given. More, teachers who embrace a fuller understanding of their students’ backgrounds and personal experiences can use them as a tool to make connections for all of their students.

In the classroom it is very necessary that the teacher give adequate explanations, so that the students can understand what is expected of them. In the EFL classroom this is more prone to create anxiety because the explanations are given in another language that takes even more effort by the students to comprehend than their own language. Therefore, a well-planned lesson is essential. I believe that the teacher must be creative and flexible. It is also of utmost importance that the teacher is able to sense the class dynamics at any given moment. This will determine the approach to be taken to re-iterate what the students must learn.