In China as in the US, one can easily give up the career of a language teacher to become a lawyer or a businessman. I, however, gave up a promising legal and business career to become a language teacher, but I have never regretted it. In fact, the more I teach, the more committed I am to teaching. But not just teaching. Having battled with China’s traditional mode of teaching for several years, I now would like to help improve teaching in China by introducing new and more effective instructional technology and media into the country. For that, I would like to pursue an advanced degree in education in your country.
Now an English teacher at the training center of the China National Container Corporation, I graduated in 1995 from the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing, where I majored in business law. At this highly respected higher-learning institution, I received broad training that was both rigorous and vigorous. After four years of undergraduate studies, the strong logic inherent in law translated into strong logic in my thinking. With the knowledge and skills I attained in the law program, I boast the kind of intellectual maturity that would help me whatever I do. But law was never my first choice for a profession.
Starting from my high school days, I always dreamed of becoming a teacher. In the second year of high school, we once had to write an essay on the topic “what do you want to do when you grow up”. I proudly wrote, “I want to be a teacher!” But my parents shattered my dream by insisting that I pursue another profession. My father, an engineer with a Ph. D. degree, and my mother, a university teacher of English, had their reasons. Chinese teachers, particularly those teaching at the primary and secondary levels, are poorly paid and begrudgingly respected. Being young and inexperienced in the world, I acceded to their wishes when I was choosing my major for the university.
But my passion for teaching was not to be stifled forever. Giver any opportunity, it would burst out. Upon graduation with an LL. B. Degree, I first took up the position of a supervisor with the China National Container Corporation in charge of its Overseas Sales Department. As the job entailed frequent translation and interpretation between Chinese and English, I persisted in improving my English proficiency by attending various training courses and learning it on my own. My command of the foreign tongue became so good that, after about one year, I began to teach it to my colleagues on a full-time basis at the company’s training center. After a huge detour, my career finally got back on track.
What makes teaching so enjoyable to me is that it is a learning experience. I enjoy it the most when my students ask difficult questions, particularly questions that I have to think long and hard to answer. I also enjoy posing questions to students, but my questions are never intended to intimidate the students or even test their knowledge but rather designed to stimulate their minds. In the constant exchange of questions and answers, students and teachers improve themselves alike to the credit of the old Chinese saying: To teach is to learn. In my three years of teaching, I really have learned a great deal.
One of the things I have learned is the ability to not only deal with but also strike an accord with people of different backgrounds. My students at the training center are all adults accomplished in a variety of roles and professions. In most cases, they are older than I am. While I stand as their equals, I have served as their mentors and role models the same way as most teachers do their students. By so doing, I have won their trust and confidence in what I teach, which has helped to make my teaching powerful and effective.
To take full advantage of my teaching skills, I started in October 1996 to teach English and other subjects at the primary school I attended when I was a child. As the children I teach are at the age when I studied here, I am particularly sensitive to their needs and appreciative of their potential. Together with other teachers, I designed various training programs in calligraphy, art, writing, mental calculation, and English, programs that combine learning with entertainment. The kids n my class are now learning more and faster thanks to the fun they find everyday in my programs.
Entertainment is, however, by no means just a ploy I use to sweeten the bitter pill of learning for the children, but rather has its own intrinsic value. While kids can hardly learn well without being able to have fun, the lack of fun hurts more than the kids’ ability to learn. It can impair the kids’ emotional and psychological health to an extent that no amount of knowledge and skills drab teaching force-feeds into them can make up. Entertainment is therefore part and parcel of what we teachers have to provide to children if we are to help them grow up into productive members of the society. The way I see entertainment, it should be considered an end in education.
As China’s education is oriented overwhelmingly towards helping kids pass exams, entertainment is about the least on the mind of an average teacher or principal. In the rush to produce super kids as measured by the grades out of exams, the purpose of education is lost all too often. The curriculum is limited to subjects covered by mandatory exams. Students are seldom encouraged to come up with original ideas. Interaction between teachers and students is kept at a minimum in the classroom. The teachers compete to heap homework on the students, as do the parents. While everybody is tired to death, few kids get armed with the ability to take initiatives or solve real-world problems. It is high time that fresh approaches were brought in.
One of the ways to make a change to the Chinese classroom is to utilize new technologies and media of teaching. School authorities in China, as those elsewhere, increasingly realize the importance of computerization, and many of the better-off schools in China are already stacked with state-of-the-art computers. But reports say only a tiny fraction of those computers are adequately utilized. The situation with other educational technologies and media is no better. They are either absent from the school sitting or vastly under-used. Few Chinese teachers have acquired the know-how or the drive to make use of these modern facilities.
I therefore would like to pursue first a master’s degree and then a Ph. D. degree in instructional technology and media in the United States, where the use of modern educational facilities is undoubtedly the most advanced in the world. Judging by the information I have culled from your, website I think your institution is an American leader in the research and studies of this field. I am anxious to study under the seasoned guidance of your distinguished faculty. I hope that, after I complete my advanced training in your program, I can be a much more effective teacher in China, one that sets an example for all other Chinese teachers.
范文2
The most important element of my classroom, my office, or my home is a personal relationship. I have figured this out on examination of my activities in high school (youth group regional president), college (telephone crisis counselor, resident advisor), or profession (teacher). As a teacher I made a point of getting to know every student in my classes personally. It quickly became my experience that students were more willing to learn, work, and excel when they were appreciated as individuals and when they knew that the adult in the classroom genuinely liked them.
After a few years' experience teaching seniors, I accepted a teaching job at the middle school with the freshman class that had just learned they would not physically be moving to the high school. How would I motivate and get to know these kids? Everything that I had ever heard about or remembered about 9th grade made me want to turn and run. But what convinced me to take this job was technology. In my interview I learned that instead of the library, I was to use the Internet (the what?). I was told that I would receive a laptop computer (aren't those the things that people with "real" jobs used?) and that the kids could teach me anything I needed to know.
Computers became my thing. Immediately I began to learn how to surf the Internet from 8th and 9th graders (Sanj and Judy said I was teachers' pet). My kids opened up and set aside their raging adolescence to use technology to help me and help each other. As the year with the freshmen continued, I was overjoyed. First, my kids and I had the best rapport in years (gosh Miss Glazer, are all of your PowerPoint slides gonna look the same?). Second, my creativity in teaching increased as new doors were opened to me and in turn to my students (conspiracy takes on a whole new meaning when the Internet is your primary source). Third, I was learning new and exciting things. I had finally found a combination of skills that affected my students in such a positive way that I knew I had to share my findings.
I have since taken my computer knowledge, instructional design ideas, plus my emphasis on personal relationships and applied it to teachers and students in my district and other districts in the North Texas area.
Through the Learning, Design, and Technology program at Stanford University I hope to continue on the route that started for me at the middle school. I know that I will learn new things and have an opportunity to apply them to educational settings. I also know that I will be able to establish relationships with colleagues, professors, and other students. Although a master's degree is the short term goal, I believe that my long term goal remains the same as when I began using technology in my classroom three years ago: to see students better educated through a curriculum infused with technology by teachers who do not lose sight of the personal relationships that benefit all kids.
This long-term goal may be achieved by working in a single school, a school district, or an educational center. It may be reached by teaching new teachers on the university level, by instructing at-risk students in a county after-school program, or by designing a terrific new classroom model and implementing it through a regional education lab with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Whatever the job, my aim remains the same and as it did years ago with my freshmen, I feel certain that I will use any situation to fulfill my goal to benefit students (can you say optimistic, or is it opportunistic?)
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