Rebecca McCarthy

Greater St. Louis Area United States

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Education

The classroom isn’t about teaching, it is about learning, and learning has to begin and end with the student. I hold to the constructivist belief that learning has to be constructed through life experience. In an ESL classroom this requires the presentation of authentic situations in a compassionate environment that challenges the students without overloading them with information. I want my students to finish my class with a new perspective on learning, language, and culture. While some students learn a new language just for fun, most learn language as a tool for some other goal. As a teacher it is my job to learn what the students’ goals are beyond the language classroom, and th...