Chapter 7 Reaction Paper

Providing for Effective Teaching

                To ensure effective teaching, the institutions and teaching methods must be aligned and molded towards achieving the same objective. “The organizational culture of a school refers to the ethos and environment that exist within a school, the kinds of communications and decision making that takes place, and the management and staffing structure they support (198).” This are factors to consider when planning out any plan of action. The institution must ensure it has the resources to provide a learning environment accessible to all students. The institution must create a culture of people that know what they are responsible for and help motivate them to become efficient and effective in what they do to provide the best outcome possible. On Guam, with limited resources and the lack of highly qualified teachers and good learning environment, providing that is a challenge. Many of the schools are overpopulated, not all teachers are highly qualified to be in the classrooms and those highly qualified are not compensated fairly for their work. This is an issue that the community and its leaders must address.

                The teachers are highly important as they are the backbone to the education system. They must be skilled and well versed in their content area through attaining degrees and certification to be considered a highly qualified teacher. Many of the teachers on Guam are limited term teachers because they do not possess the qualifications to meet the requirements. Not only do teachers need to have the skills and the knowledge, they must also be provided the training and materials to have a successful lesson plan for their students. This again requires resources that are limited on Guam. Not all schools provide training or support for their teachers which deters from having their teachers be effective in the classrooms. Teachers have to deal with students of all types who are part of the Special Education Program, English as a Second Language program and the regular students who struggle or succeed in the classroom. These teachers need to be compensated and motivated to continue to ensure they produce productive students who have mastered skills identified by the education system as important for the students to learn. This again is an issue that continues to be addressed by the community.

                The teaching and learning process are very important for a successful outcome. The teaching process requires that a teacher be able to include multiple strategies to accommodate all students of different learning styles. The success will vary depending on their planning process and execution method of assessment. For teachers to include various activities will help students retain the information quicker. Students have different ways of processing things, whether they are visual or audio learners, teachers must ensure they include strategies and activities in their lessons that will compliment all types of learners. This can tend to be a struggles as all teachers have different ways of teaching. Cooperation and Communication between and amongst teachers is important to reflect on what works for the students so that changes can be made to ensure that students retain and learn the information given to them.