TABLE OF CONTENT
PURPOSE OF PORTFOLIO……………………………………………………………………………………….. A
TEACHING PRACTICE GOALS…………………………………………………………………………………… B
TEACHING PHYLOSOPHY………………………………………………………………………………………… C
LETTER OF INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………… D
STATEMENTS OF EXPECTATION……………………………………………………………………………… E
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Mentor
Self
University supervisor
SCHOOL CALENDER………………………………………………………………………………………………… F
TEACHING TIMETABLE…………………………………………………………………………………………….G
SYLLABUS ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. HI
SCHEME OF WORK……………………………………………………………………………………………….. JK
LESSON PLANS……………………………………………………………………………………………………… LM
RECORD OF WORK DONE……………………………………………………………………………………..NO
LESSON /TEACHING OBSERVATIONS……………………………………………………………………..P
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Mentor
Self
University Supervisor
EVIDENCE OF CONFERENCE………………………………………………………………………………….. Q
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL………………………………………………………………………………………….. R
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Daily
SAMPLE OF TEACHING NOTES…………………………………………………………………………………ST
SAMPLE OF STUDENTS WORK………………………………………………………………………………… UV
PARTICIPATION IN PROFFESIONAL DEVELOPMENT…………………………………………………. W
REFLECTIVE REPORTS/ SUMMARY/ESSAY……………………………………………………………….. X
Mountain View Adventist Academy
Private Bag 45
Mogoditshane
Dear Madam
RE: LETTER OF INTRODUCTION
I am Duduetsang Setswakae, a post graduate diploma in education student at the University of
Botswana. As a requirement for my course I will be doing my teaching practice at your school
from May 28 2018 to the 13th of July 2018and I will be teaching French and English Languages.
As a student teacher I am looking forward to working well with the staff and learners, it will be
my pleasure to learn under them and I am hoping for their cooperation and support so that I can
be able to reach my goals as a student teacher. I expect to learn a lot from your staff that will
help me to be a great teacher and to be someone the students look up to in the future. I promise to
be a great, well-mannered student teacher and to work well with my supervisors and will not be
involved in unnecessary office politics. I will put all that I have learnt at school in practice and I
will do my best. I believe that with the help of the French and English teachers I will acquire all
the needed knowledge that I will need in my profession.
I will really appreciate it if the departments of French and English will allow me to work under
them and be willing to guide me. I look forward to be in great working terms with each and
every staff in the school.
Yours Faithfully
Duduetsang Setswakae
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I believe that learning is a lifelong process that takes place every time and everyday it never stops. This
to me means that even as a teacher I learn new things every day even if it’s from the learners. Learning
is a two way process where the teacher can learn from learners and vice versa.
My general belief as a teacher is that each child is a unique in their own way and that they need a
secure, caring, and stimulating atmosphere in which to grow and mature emotionally, intellectually,
physically, and socially. It is my will to help students meet their fullest capability in all areas by providing
an environment that is safe, supports risk-taking, and invites a sharing of ideas. I wish to become a
teacher whom the students will be willing to open up to and who will help the students become better
people based on their capabilities.
As a language teacher one of my goals is to be a guide to the learners and promote a learner centered
learning environment where learner’s learning will be directed by their natural curiosity. With this they
will be able to learn from each other and from the environment around them with me being their
mentor. To make this possible I will provide all the materials and information needed by the learners to
be able to discover themselves being hands on. I will also teach my students to appreciate everything in
their environment and their mates with their differences. If they could learn to do that then they will be
able to work well with each other. I will be their role model in this aspect too, I believe that learners
learn best what they observe so I should be able to practice what I teach my learners so that they can
copy my good behavior. By so doing I will be teaching them that no one is better than the other and I
will be giving each one of them freedom without fear of being mocked.
I believe each and every child has the potential to bring something unique and special to the world so I
will let myself to be an instrument that learners will use to meet their full potential.
Teaching does not only involve the relationship between teachers and students only but also between
teachers and other teachers. So I will work well with other teachers and ask for help where needed.
Teaching Materials Paired with Reflections
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A syllabus you’ve used; reflection on what your goals were, how well the syllabus
worked, and changes you might make.
Student evaluations are represented graphically or quantitatively; reflection
suggesting how you might use this data to support your improvement.
Class material you created; reflection as to why you produced it, how well it
worked toward your goals, how you might change it, or why retain it.
A journal of your teaching or someone else’s teaching in a particular class;
reflection on your own journal, each other’s journals, or a dialogue between the
two of you about what you see in these journals.
Descriptive information about a specific context in which you worked: courses
taught, class sizes and attributes, the institution’s expectations, your
expectations; reflection on how your teaching took these things into account and
what you think of the results.
Information about your wider involvement in teacher development such as other
programs in which you’ve participated, teaching materials you’ve developed,
involvement in curriculum development; reflection on why you chose to do these
particular things, what you got from them, and how you might apply them.
I believe that college freshmen are at the perfect time in their lives for the context of what we teach in the First-Year
Writing. Students come into our classrooms with a backpack filled with their families’ values and
attitudes, their experiences, their influences thus far. All of this shapes what they have come to
believe about the world. Yet they are also away from home, on their own, and open to new
experiences and views. I think this is the perfect setting for teaching composition. As instructors, we
ask them to enter into the discourse on a topic and listen to what is being said before they ‘put their
oar in’. We teach them that academic writing is usually a response to what others have said and to
use these writings as a springboard to enter the discourse. I try to get them to take out the ‘items’ in
their backpack and re-examine and reorganize them through thinking critically about what they
already know or believe about a topic. While teaching the research process, I encourage them to look
again at these backpack items through the lens of the new information and perspectives they’re
acquiring while exploring other sources on a topic.
I believe that as instructors we should get students to reach for a higher level of writing. David Bartholomae’s
essay, “Inventing the University” influenced and stirred me. He sees the primary role of a composition
teacher as exposing students to academic discourse. I agree that first year composition students
should be immersed in academic discourse so that they can begin to make it their own. From my
teaching experience, I see that getting my students to understand the elements of persuasion, to
write with a voice of authority, and to compose for an audience are the fundamentals of my job.
Bartholomae looks at teaching as holding up a high bar that his students strive to reach. At first, I
struggled with how to balance that with how I saw my job as a teacher—as holding open the door to
academia and encouraging my students to enter. I think I have found the balance. I’ve come to a
place where I can help students raise the level of their writing while providing them with an
atmosphere in which they feel welcome and supported. I see my primary job as helping them reinvent
their writing and themselves as college students.
I believe instructors should create a learning atmosphere for students that is respectful, welcoming and fair. I get
to know my students as well as I can, and as quickly as I can. I try to create a relaxed learning
environment, but a classroom that holds them to high expectations. I believe in student-centered
teaching that encourages learning by both students and teachers. I strive for a classroom that
encourages dialogue and fosters a degree of student input as to curricula and grading criteria. I like
students to think about the class as a community. But I work hard to strike the balance between
relaxed and demanding. I constantly strive to aim just over a student's head. But I am aware that not
all students learn the same way or at the same pace. It is important to me to get to know each of
them and their writing so I can focus on each student’s potential and where that can take them. To
achieve this I value students’ input in class discussions, initiate and encourage students to utilize
email and text to communicate with me, and promote meeting with me outside of class.
I believe that peer review is a powerful learning tool. I have been influenced by Lunsford and Glenn’s article
“Rhetorical Theory and the Teaching of Writing”. We as humans can often understand our own patterns of
response by seeing them as part of a larger social process as we aim at understanding and
constructing meaning from it. I agree with this and have tried to get my students to think about how
they respond to writing, so they can think about how their readers will respond to their own writing.
Having a writer’s workshop element in my classroom helps students understand more about audience
and rhetorical stance. When students are able to read/hear the writing of other students and have
others read/hear their work, they see the different ways their classmates respond to assignments.
They get others’ feedback and they see a variety of ways to tackle the rhetorical situations.
I believe that teaching students to write is teaching students to think, and simultaneously that to expand
students’ thinking is to prepare students to write. I have found that the best way to get my students
to think is get them to look at writing through the rhetorical triangle—the combination of writer, text
and audience. I try to guide them in understanding that each component is equilateral, each appeal as
important as the others, and that the balance of the three is vital to the art of persuasion. One of the
first ways I show students how to use these concepts in their writing is by offering them examples of
writing that illustrate this. I share articles and essays that directly show how a writer presents herself
as ethical and knowledgeable, or how well a writer taps in to the reader’s emotions by making their
argument matter, or how a writer uses a certain arrangement to strengthen their view by offering
supports. E. M. Forster said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Writing can and
should be used to help students discover what they know or think about a subject.
I believe my responding to student papers provides the strongest opportunity to help my students become better
writers. It is the feedback I give students that is one of my teaching strengths. This is where I can be
specific to each student, identify and discuss with that individual student what they can do to develop
their writing and use appeals more persuasively. Peter Elbow’s position on responding to student
writing influenced me. I like his method of “comment(ing) as a reader about effects rather than an
editor trying to fix the text.” I think of my comments in the context of a conversation the student and
I are having. I use Elbow’s guideline of responding as more human than teacher; commenting on what
my student is saying rather than only on how she is saying it.
I believe that incorporating technology into our teaching benefits both teachers and students. We as composition
instructors should see technology as a way to accomplish more with our students, a way to improve
both learning and teaching. I have been actively involved in much of the department’s offerings in
technology and pedagogy. I was selected to be a part of a group of instructors who went through
instruction and then developed one of our department’s composition classes as a hybrid. As part of
this training, our group learned DePaul’s new course management system D2L. I also was a member of
a group that piloted Digication. I continue to be an active member of DWRD and support my
colleagues by helping them to become more comfortable using technology in their teaching, helping
them to see these new technologies not as something else they have to learn but as something they
can balance with their pedagogy.
Having taught 103, 104 and 202 online, I have learned that the online environment adds extra
challenges for the student and for the instructor. In some ways, teaching online has made me a
better teacher in the traditional classroom. I’ve learned that organization is essential, but in an online
course, poor organization can hinder the student's and the course's success. Without the weekly faceto-face contact comes a greater need for students to be self-starters. Some of the students can rise
to this, others struggle. Communication is key in online teaching and I make a habit of emailing my
students twice-weekly reminders, encourage them to contact me in a variety of ways (including my
cell phone), and making it a priority to respond to them quickly and clearly. I make my online
classroom stable and reliable. In the end, good organization and communication in the online
classroom is an issue of trust. Students need to have confidence in me.
Digital portfolios support the WRD learning outcomes and lift students to a meta-awareness about
their writing. I also found building a digital portfolio heightens my students' awareness of audience
and purpose. They are enjoying the process and learning from it. And I am learning more too - about
them, about Digication and about the collection and reflection about one's writing.
I believe in the value and power of language. Words can inform, soothe, thrill, hurt and caress. They can
also deliver a punch, lift one up, tear one down and light a fire. I try to get students to appreciate that
power but use it with integrity. The power of writing comes in the way in which we present our words
to be understood without coming off as superior. I really believe if I can get students to understand
this, it will be of great value to them in their futures.