Motivating Students to Learn English Like A Hero

I am an English teacher from Saudi Arabia. I have been teaching for seven years. I taught all different levels of elementary school, middle school, and high school in different cities. I studied at Elqassim University. I graduated from Arabic and social studies. The English department is considered as social studies. I studied different kinds of subjects like literature, linguistics, and semantics. Before I graduated I had to go to a local school for training which made me like being a teacher.

I became a teacher of English because in Saudi Arabia teaching English is a high-need area. I'd be sure to find a position quickly after graduating and could choose to live in wherever city I wanted. It was important to me to work in the same city that I grew up in. My family has lived in Buraidah for generations. I am a very social person who spends most of the week meeting with relatives and friends. I was hired after I graduated immediately while in another subject they have to wait more than two years.

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I believe my current level of English is different since I begin this program. My classes helped me communicate with the English speakers in my daily life. Also, I studied at ELI for six months. I started at level five and ended at level eight. I have improved my skills in reading, writing, and communications. Since I started this Program, my listening has improved as well. One of my initial skills as a teacher is that I am good at preparing a lesson very carefully to avoid errors and repetition while explaining the lesson and protecting myself from being embarrassed in answering students' questions.

Also, I don't rely on a single type of method, but I try to use various ways to study so that the student remains awake and eager to study. In addition, I tried to encourage students by rewarding them and enhancing their love for learning, and energizing their desire to do so. The last skill is communication between the teacher and the student. This also increases the student's ability to absorb and understand the lesson.

My main goal in this program is to develop strong English Skills because I am an English teacher. I improved my presentation skills by using Microsoft Office and other apps.

Through immersion in a local school, I learned about new teaching techniques so, I can make my teaching more interesting. I learned about new websites that related to technology like Kahoot, Hero, IXL, and Quizlet.

Education is recognized as an important thing in the development of any country. I believe that education is a necessary foundation for all citizens because it helps both the individual and the world progress and advance My philosophy is to teach students how to think, solve problems and find the relevance in what they learn. It’s paramount to learn how to think because thinking is a way to knowledge. In addition, this philosophy prepares students to have the ability to choose the right decision. I always tell my students this, “A Knowledge of any skill is insurance against poverty.” I believe that my philosophies are Progressivism and Essentialism. Progressivism means students actively engaged in learning. Progressivism provides a big influence on students because they are doing things rather than reading about them. Progressivism provides students a comfortable environment in which to learn. Also, I think students nowadays prefer to learn in a fun way and flexible way. The second philosophy that I'll use in my teaching is Essentialism. Essentialism is by following the curriculum that provides from the government. Essentialism means students should learn basic subjects and skills. In addition, Essentialist teachers are the main resource of information. Essentialism is defined as “teaching students the accumulated knowledge of our civilization through core courses in the traditional academic disciplines” (Sadker and Zittleman, Teachers, school, and society, 2010, p.162). Essentialism has a main focus on basic skills like math, science etc.

Through the immersion, I notice that The teacher prefer to let the students work either in a group , individually, partner and in PC's. I notice the teachers dealing with canvas, Ixl, hero, class dojo, Google classroom, Kiddom, and many websites that make the teaching easier. Also, I notice that The students continue doing their activity inside class.

The teacher helps those students who need help individually. The school is equipped with many different kind facilities that makes teaching more diversity like microphone, different shapes of tables.

Since I started teaching seven years ago. I have been through many problems but fortunately, most of it I can go over it. The most issue that took me several years to discover the solution to lack of motivation in learning English. When I taught elementary school I didn't have this issue because students are excited about learning a new language, but in secondary and high school I suffered from this issue. I see American schools have many different websites that make the students excited and motivated. How to motivate students in learning before I introduce my initiative I will define what does it mean learning motivation. In my humble opinion, learning motivation is a combination of feelings that push students into learning and to get learning goals. Without this motivation active learning doesn't occur. There are many resources for motivation like external and internal. External sources as teachers, school, parents, and friends. The learners may learn to look for satisfying their parents and teachers. Internal sources which are learner drives himself for learning by inner desire to satisfy himself and his passion for gaining knowledge. There are many aspects of Decreasing motivation such as, forgetting homework, ignore the instructions inside the class, and absence. There are many reasons for low motivation but before that, I think those reasons come from the student, teachers, family, and environment. The Ministry of Education wants us to bring an initiative that improves our education. Through immersion in a local school, I notice that the school utilizes a website called Hero. Its main objective is to improve student behavior, transform school culture, accountability, responsibility, and increase the drive to do what’s right. These are the life skills that can be taught in school – with tools that improve student behavior. Hero also elevates student growth. It makes a positive climate and empowers educators – day in and day out – to be the positive change. Hero gets students in class and on time, changing negative attendance patterns. And, it motivates students to make good choices, more often, through positive behavior reinforcement. From the front office to the classroom, Hero helps educators make substantial — and measurable — improvements in these areas and more. Schools and districts using Hero see significant behavior improvements every day. In fact, a reduction in negative behavior is so common among Hero-users that new schools can expect to see infractions drop by 20-90%.

How does Hero work?

Improvements that can be seen are a decrease in tardies, discipline equity, accountability, positive behavior, reinforcement, relational improvement, and student engagement.

Research has proven that when school culture is more positive, discipline-related issues decrease. At the same time, in-class instruction time grows and student performance thrives. Changing school culture with Hero can transform an entire campus, creating environments where teachers can teach and staff wants to be. With Hero, schools can prepare students better academically, but also socially and emotionally too, building a generation that's ready to rise.

I’ve seen this program work in my immersion school-Sunridge Middle School. The teachers can give the students positive points by scanning the students’ IDs. In turn, the dean, counselors and other certain personnel can give points as well as take away points. The students have various rewards to earn with their points such as gift cards and breakfast with the dean. The rewards are leveled according to the number of points. It encourages students to compete for positive behavior.

I will present this information to my supervisor and share it with my colleagues. I hope to purchase Hero and model it in my classroom for teachers and administration to observe and see the difference in behavior. Through the immersion, I learned a lot of things that will help me improve my teaching. In fact, this experience is the best thing that happened to me To sum up, after I try using Hero I believe there will be an improvement in their motivation, I believe that the students do their best because of challenges inside the classroom and school. I believe Hero will improve my teaching in my class because the students will be motivated. If the students see if they doing well there will be prizes for working hard and keep attention in class. Hero helps students focus and they will gain the knowledge they need to be successful.