Analysis of reading Research on Teachers' Attitude

This research tries to analyze relevant aspects in the classroom environment by citing several experts in order to demonstrate the influence of professors’ attitude on students’ learning.

This paper proves that the professor attitude in classroom affects the second language learning process. Also motivation is very important aspect in this process of learning and it could be affected by different situations.

This research is based on different situations given in the English classroom, situations which take to loss of interest in the process or lack of interest in the English subject.

Self-esteem is a very important aspect on students when because they could have a high self-esteem so they participate in class and such, but if they don`t, then it will be more difficult for them to understand because they will not ask questions or participate in any activity because they are shy, so there is when teachers have to implement different kinds of activities in which all students even the shy ones can participate and try to increase students’ self-esteem. That is why teachers have to establish a friendly relationship student-professor to create confidence and a better communication that could make easier the interchange of knowledge. Otherwise, students will not have enough confidence to ask any question and it will be more difficult for them to understand.

The motivation plays an important role in the process of learning Second Language, and this happens because for instance students could be just interest in learning a second language because they like it or because they want to find a better job. These motivations are understood like the two ways teachers have to employ students in the class. “Therefore, when the only reason for performing an act it self relies on passing an exam or obtaining some practices right the motivation is likely to be extrinsic. Opposite, when the experience of doing something generates interest and enjoyment and the reason for performing the activity lies within the activity itself. Then, the motivation is likely to be intrinsic” (Williams and Burden 1997). However, it is important to know that those kinds of motivations have different results. For example, when the motivation is intrinsic, learning is an action that could be part of the personal improvement and it could be a permanent learning because the students learn by their own desire, because they like it. On the other hand, if a student learns because of an external reason for instance to get a job, it could become into a competition. Also what the student study could be forgot easily because there was no a real interest to learn. So, motivation has to faces the good one and the not so good one. The good one has good results. That is the intrinsic; this could be reinforced by the professor in different ways to get good results. However, the extrinsic motivation could be foster by the professor, incorrectly. Professors could believe that giving prizes, for example, to his students can make them participate or get a good score and he will obtain a better learning process when is not absolutely right. Rewarding must be carefully implemented or wrong conditioning will be obtained.

Another important thing is the relation between the professor and the student, professor should be tolerant and a helper so in that way students feel comfortable taking risks because they know that they will not be embarrassed or criticized if they make a mistake.

Booker Taliaferro Washington

Background

Booker T. Washington was born April 5, 1856. He was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915. Representative of the last generation of black leaders born in slavery, he spoke on behalf of the large majority of blacks who lived in the South but had lost their right to vote.

Washington's work on education issues helped him enlist both the moral and substantial financial support of many major white philanthropists. He became friends with such self-made men as Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers; Sears, Roebuck and Company President Julius Rosenwald; and George Eastman, inventor and founder of Kodak. These individuals and many other wealthy men and women funded his causes, including Hampton and Tuskegee institutes.

Contributions to education

The schools Washington supported were founded to produce teachers. However, graduates had often gone back to their largely impoverished rural southern communities only to find precious few schools and educational resources. To address those needs, Washington enlisted his philanthropic network of matching funds programs to stimulate construction of numerous rural public schools for black children in the South. Together, these efforts eventually established and operated over 5,000 schools and supporting resources for the betterment of blacks throughout the South in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. The local schools were a source of communal pride and were priceless to African-American families when poverty and segregation limited severely the life chances of the pupils. A major part of Washington's legacy, the number of model rural schools increased with matching funds from the Rosenwald Fund into the 1930s. He also helped with the Progressive Era by forming the National Negro Business League.

The organizers of the new all-black state school called Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama found the energetic leader they sought in 25-year-old Washington. He believed that with self help, people could go from poverty to success. The new school opened on July 4, 1881, initially using space in a local church. The next year, Washington purchased a former plantation, which became the permanent site of the campus. Under his direction, his students literally built their own school: constructing classrooms, barns and outbuildings; and growing their own crops and raising livestock; both for learning and to provide for most of the basic necessities.

Both men and women had to learn trades as well as academics. Washington helped raise funds to establish and operate hundreds of small community schools and institutions of higher educations for blacks. The Tuskegee faculty used all the activities to teach the students basic skills to take back to their mostly rural black communities throughout the South. The main goal was not to produce farmers and tradesmen, but teachers of farming and trades who taught in the new schools and colleges for blacks across the South. The school expanded over the decades, adding programs and departments, to become the present-day Tuskegee University.

Washington expressed his aspirations for his race in his direction of the school. He believed that by providing needed skills to society, African Americans would play their part, leading to acceptance by white Americans. He believed that blacks would eventually gain full participation in society by acting as responsible, reliable American citizens. Shortly after the Spanish-American War, President William McKinley and most of his cabinet visited Washington. He led the school until his death in 1915. By then Tuskegee's endowment had grown to over $1.5 million, compared to its initial $2,000 annual appropriation.

Despite his travels and widespread work, Washington remained as principal of Tuskegee. Washington's health was deteriorating rapidly; he collapsed in New York City and was brought home to Tuskegee, where he died on November 14, 1915, at the age of 59. He was buried on the campus of Tuskegee University near the University Chapel.

His death was believed at the time to have been a result of congestive heart failure, aggravated by overwork. In March 2006, with the permission of his descendants, examination of medical records indicated that he died of hypertension, with a blood pressure more than twice normal, confirming what had long been suspected. At his death Tuskegee's endowment exceeded $1.5 million. His greatest life's work, the work of education of blacks in the South, was well underway and expanding.

Analysis of the Reading: Defining Educational Innovations

The sages say that the past can’t be changed, but it is vital to learn from each and every one of their experiences, as this will allow a better present and a future. That's true, we all have a past teacher, and we walked path as facilitators or mediators. These experiences that all of us have lived in different ways, because we had had distinct occasions of growing up, they are actually learning events and each event is an opportunity to recreate and rethink the teaching act.

Innovation as English learning doesn’t only mean thinking how teachers can modify and teach the four skills: speaking, reading, listening and writing; innovation is deeper than that. Furthermore, teachers have to get better conditions of teaching in other spaces such as culture, values, expectation, customs tradition, and adaptation of the curriculum with the place in which acquire more performance.

Better use of innovation in the classroom must seek to complement, enrich, deepen and diversify the educational process guided by teachers.

It supposes that an educational change must be improved positively, it should not be worse, in which exits an harmony among teacher, student and parents. To accomplish that, the first step must give the teacher. The teacher´s role is the mediator between student and learning. That´s way the teacher must be prepared academically and know the learning innovations that best adapt in the educational process background.

There are factors that influence and affect the correct use of innovations as a teaching method. Teacher must think about the economical budget available to students. We can´t ask to the students to brings laptops, even we could wish. Culturally, Costa Rica is not a country in which doesn’t offer a truthful English language. As a result, English learners must find better opportunities in other countries because Costa Rica´s exigencies are minimum.

Innovation includes the conceptual, administrative, pedagogical and technological place the way they are conceived, promoted, explore and utilize the use of technologies, such as digital. Digital innovation should provide guidance for increasing Technologies both in the laboratory and classroom space, which many students and teachers more time attending.

Something that is closely linked to innovation, and we cannot deny is the use of technology as a progress of the English students learners.

For new generations of children and young people, the innovation as graphic, multimedia and audiovisual is privileged above all else. Young people live in a world full of images, motion and sound, over letters and paragraphs. It is vital that the life of this population is accompanied at all times for the media, because it is natural for them, so they learn more and better. However it is not enough to reach them with visual, a curriculum topic very well selected, must be analyzed in advance to find out how we will take advantage and we have to get the most out to create a culture of analysis. Moreover, we use the videos, music, movies, advertisements, etc, but we always must accompany them with a few questions, comments, spaces for discussion. We look for the appropriate length videos for our students, previously analyzed the language and the messages it conveys.

The use of digital technology does not replace the physical tools (notebook, books, and pencils) complements. Each tool has its role and all are valid and necessary. Both teachers and students can use digital technologies to facilitate processes of presentation, discussion, introducing a new theme and project development, provided the teacher is the one that defines the best time and strategy to use.