Interview

After interviewing Mr. Hammer, I think that his teaching style ties into learning theory that we learned in our textbook. A learning theory “provides a framework to test hypotheses about human behavior” and “makes predictions about human acquisition of knowledge” (Krogh, Fielstein, Phelps, & Newman, 2015, Ch. 2). His theory is that education should have a high-level of student input and that this will yield the best results. Mr. Hammer demonstrates many of the attributes necessary to be a successful teacher. He is knowledgeable and fluent in the Spanish language. He is a charismatic and fun-loving teacher. He is extremely interested in the well-being of his students. All these things and more make him a successful educator. Mr. Hammer does not think his philosophy of education has changed over the years. He is still trying to keep his classroom as student-centered as possible. He always wants to remain the facilitator of learning and have his students remain the innovators of education. Through this interview, I wanted to determine how contrasting teachers may be from one another, and Mr. Hammer and I are certainly different. Our philosophies of education are unique from one another.

Mr. Hammer’s main learning goal for his students is to make his classroom fun and engaging to his students but he also wants to make sure they are learning. He wants his students to feel comfortable as they speak the Spanish language. He doesn’t expect them to leave his classroom and be fluent speakers of Spanish but he wants them to have the knowledge and the tools to be able to go out and speak with people in their community using the language. He hopes they recognize the potential difficulties they may encounter as they speak another language besides English. He attempts to accomplish his goals by offering different types of speaking activities throughout the course of their studies to build up their confidence.

Summary and Analysis: Instructional Practices

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Mr. Hammer believes that hands-on instruction is the most effective method of teaching. He thinks that lecture-based instruction is a thing of the past. If teachers want to make sure their students are learning, they need to be sure that the students are producing classroom products in their own creative manner. Another important learning tool to him is peer-to-peer learning. In his experience, students often understand more from their peers versus their teachers.

When I asked Mr. Hammer how comfortable he is with technology in his classroom, he smiled and laughed. He said that he is very comfortable with technology in the classroom. Every lesson that he teaches uses technology in some way. He has access to a SMARTBOARD, document camera, clickers, Chromebook, and green screen technology. He uses these resources daily. Technology plays a large part in every classroom today. Our students today are exposed to “a range of tools to engage them and help them explore the world” (Krogh et al., 2015, Ch. 7). It can be anything from tablets to video equipment and everything in between. Mr. Hammer fully embraces technology in his classroom. He uses Chromebook and green screen technology daily and believes that the days of the traditional classroom are long gone. This saddens me because I want to teach from the traditional perspective.

He does not feel as though academic standards drive his instruction. He rarely looks at the state standards, which are the Virginia Standards of Learning tests. He does not have a test to prepare his students for. Therefore, in his classroom, he teaches how he wants to and what he wants to at the pace he wants. This must be a liberating feeling as an educator. He uses many different types of formative assessments in his classroom. He prefers to use entry slips, exit slips, whiteboards, clickers, and team games and activities to evaluate how his students are learning the material. These assessments show his creative tendencies once again. Summative assessments are only given at the end of a unit and they tend to be unit tests. He gives both oral and written versions of the tests.

Mr. Hammer does not find it difficult to incorporate elements of multiculturalism into his classroom. He tries to make his students aware, as often as he can, of different cultural barriers between the United States and Spanish-speaking countries. He asks his students to do reports on different cultural elements, such as music, dance, food, celebrations, etc. Additionally, they are asked to focus on identifying the similarities and differences between our culture and the culture of the specific country they research. This gives students a decent understanding of why every person is unique in their own way and have their own stories to tell. His classroom is diverse in that he embraces multiculturalism whole-heartedly. Diversity “is conceptualized in many different ways in terms of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, language and class” (Angus & de Oliveira, 2012, p. 7). Mr. Hammer exposes his students to different elements of the Spanish culture, such as through recipes and watching documentaries about Spanish speaking countries from all around the world. He does not worry about using standards and assessments to drive his instruction. Because it is a Spanish class that he teaches, there is not mandatory statewide assessments. This is a big difference compared to regulations that are enforced upon teachers who teach the core subjects.

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