This document summarizes the background and teaching philosophy of Marien Villanueva Vega. It includes her educational qualifications, work experience as an elementary school teacher, and beliefs about teaching writing and the role of the teacher in facilitating student discovery.

1. Demonstration
Marien Villanueva Vega
July 2009
Maya West Writing Proyect
R e a d A lo u d a S t o r y a n d W r it e

2. Elementary Education
Teacher
• BA- Inter American
University-Aguadilla
• K-3 Elementary
Education Teacher
• MAEE @ UPR-
Mayaguez
•

3. Experience
• I worked in a private catholic school in
Isabela for three years and one semester.
• I started working in this school on the
second semester of 2003-2004 school year
as a 7th grade Spanish teacher, and as a
Social Studies teacher of students of 4th, 5th,
and 6th grade.
• The next three years, from year 2004 – 2007
I worked as a First grade teacher. I taught

4. Experience
• Now I am not working as a teacher in any
school. I decided to study full time two years
ago. I am a full time student and mom.

5. Teaching Philosophy
• “Knowledge emerges only through invention and
re-invention, through the restless, impatient,
continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue
in the world, with the world, and with each other”
(Freire 72). The teacher becomes a guide who
helps her students to discover knowledge, love,
and liberty.
• I am a teacher because that is one of my biggest
passions in life. For me, education is the
cooperation between two important components
of a never ending process, those components are

6. • The students learn from each other and the world
around them.
• They discover love when they realize that their
knowledge is useful not only for them but for helping
others as well.
• They discover liberty when they see that knowledge
will give them the power to fight for their rights, for
their country, their dignity and the dignity of their
compatriots.
• In this sense, education is revolutionary because we
use human qualities to transform our experiences
and our knowledge into something productive,
something that is useful to us.

7. Writing Teacher
• I believe that writing is a big part of who
students are, it shows their personality.
• Writing is not an asocial process in which
they follow some steps in order to create
pieces of writing.
• Society plays a big role in the way students
write because of the influence it has in the
topics they choose when they have to write.

8. • Ryuko Kubota, a “post-process” theorist,
highlights the important connections that need to
be made between L2 writing and issues of race,
class, and gender. In his article “New
approaches to gender, class, and race in second
language writing” he stresses that gender, class,
and race are constitutive elements essential to
writers’ agency and identity. I believe in this too
because this makes writing more interesting,
engaging and pertinent to students.

9. • “Post – process” writing theory explains that
writing is a social act.
• “Post- process” writing teachers are liberating
students because they are reflecting upon reality
and that gives the chance to change things.
• I believe that my position as a writing teacher is
“post- process” because of the holistic way in
which “post-process” deals with education and
writing specifically.

10. Connection of my Writing
Activity with Current Research
• Raymond Morrow (1990) found in a study
that adding books and writing materials
resulted in more writing behaviors in their
classrooms (David Cooker 2007).
• In another study, students with access to
writing materials were found to write longer
descriptions in first through third grades
(Cooker 2006).

11. Writing Activity
• The teacher will read a story to the students.
• The students will have the opportunity to talk
with their peers about what happened in that
story.
• They will reflect about the issues presented
in that story using some guide questions
that the teacher will provide to them.

12. • The students will draw a picture of the story, the
way they imagine that one of the events in the
story was like. They are going to write a
description about their picture.
• They will draw and write a different solution for
the story that the teacher read to them.

13. Questions
• How many characters are in this story?
• What are the main characters of this story?
• What is the problem in this story?
• Who is the person that is living the problem?
• How does that person feels?
• Who is responsible of causing the problem?
• Who are some of the people that could have helped
the kid who owns the ball?

14. Questions
• Who are the persons that are not having an
acceptable behavior in the story? Why?
• How does this situation makes you feel?
• Do you think there is anything that can be
done?