After building the scaffolding of my unit, I am going to be as objective and critical with myself as possible when exposing my reflections. Although, in my opinion, the positive appraisal weighs more than the negative one, I will stress the negative in order to learn from it. After all, it is said that the learning process has to be built by learning from our mistakes.
I have finished implementing my unit plan and I can say that my experience has been really positive. More than I ever had expected. I think that students have learned, and I have also learned a lot from them. I am pleased to have been a part of such an important reciprocal process. Despite that this was my first time in school teaching (I was teaching in summer camps, in English schools and giving particular classes), I can say that I have been very comfortable and self-assured while teaching in my class. I have realized as well that teaching in other contexts, like those I have mentioned, have nothing to do with teaching in a secondary school.
As I said before, I think the students have learned, and this is the most important thing. In my humble opinion, they where motivated with the sessions I implemented. Consequently, the student/teacher climate was great. At first I stressed on presenting myself not as a student or as friend, but as a teacher (as we know, sometimes the trainee teachers are seen as a kind of joke in their classes, and they do not attach any importance to it). I have to admit that was one of the things that also worried me a lot because it is known that the appearance of the teacher sometimes plays an important role on defining the respect the pupils have for him/her. And I am not exactly the burly and authoritarian teacher I had respect for when I was a teenager. However, although it may, in a way, determine the relationship between you and your students, it is not the deciding factor. I think they not only see me as their teacher (or I would like to think so), but also as an approachable person, like my coach.
However, and regarding to my positive reflections, I have to thank the particular school I was assigned to. I had all the facilities to make my experience profitable and to make the positive appraisal I can make now. The school is very technological prepared. This allowed for me not to live in two different realities, because all things I have learned in class could have been implemented in my teaching lessons. My coach also helped me a lot by collaborating in all my classes, so the classes I prepared were thought to be taught with two teachers’ support. I also had the advantage of having a class with only a few students, and this allowed me to be closer to them and to do different types of activities than if I had been teaching a big class.
All things I have discussed have contributed to the achievement of my lesson plan’s objectives, but I think that what helped me the most was the classroom observation period. Acting as an observer for a period of time allowed me to create a detailed classroom profile and establish concrete classroom needs that my lesson could satisfy, as well as becoming familiar with students while they became familiar with me before teaching.
My teaching practicum has not all been peaches and cream, however, and as I said at the beginning, I have to reflect on it in order to learn from it. I think there where a few things I have not achieved:
The first one is that I never had enough time to finish all the activities I planned, and it happened again and again. It was like a sort of ‘just in case attitude’, a sort of desperation for having lots of materials prepared just in case students may have been really fast in doing the activities or the computers may not have worked. This last point allows me to talk about technical problems; they were not very frequent, but they still happened.
Another one is that maybe I did not attach enough importance to correcting all the activities. I corrected the activities and I gave my feedback, but sometimes I wonder if I could stress more on that so the students do not repeat the same mistakes. I preferred to work on new activities rather than working again and again on those that were finished.
And lastly, the most important one and still unknown to me, is how the teacher can manage with those students that show no interest for learning. How can the teacher manage if their parents do not buy them the books? How can the teacher manage a student’s conflict in which the parents do not do anything but praising their son/daughter. According to that, I felt myself as totally lacked of resources. I sometimes wondered what I could do to motivate them, and despite the fact that sometimes there are things that escape from teacher hands, I think I have failed on solving that problem. But if I were asked of what I would change if I had to start again, I would not be able to give an answer to that, either.
I have finished implementing my unit plan and I can say that my experience has been really positive. More than I ever had expected. I think that students have learned, and I have also learned a lot from them. I am pleased to have been a part of such an important reciprocal process. Despite that this was my first time in school teaching (I was teaching in summer camps, in English schools and giving particular classes), I can say that I have been very comfortable and self-assured while teaching in my class. I have realized as well that teaching in other contexts, like those I have mentioned, have nothing to do with teaching in a secondary school.
As I said before, I think the students have learned, and this is the most important thing. In my humble opinion, they where motivated with the sessions I implemented. Consequently, the student/teacher climate was great. At first I stressed on presenting myself not as a student or as friend, but as a teacher (as we know, sometimes the trainee teachers are seen as a kind of joke in their classes, and they do not attach any importance to it). I have to admit that was one of the things that also worried me a lot because it is known that the appearance of the teacher sometimes plays an important role on defining the respect the pupils have for him/her. And I am not exactly the burly and authoritarian teacher I had respect for when I was a teenager. However, although it may, in a way, determine the relationship between you and your students, it is not the deciding factor. I think they not only see me as their teacher (or I would like to think so), but also as an approachable person, like my coach.
However, and regarding to my positive reflections, I have to thank the particular school I was assigned to. I had all the facilities to make my experience profitable and to make the positive appraisal I can make now. The school is very technological prepared. This allowed for me not to live in two different realities, because all things I have learned in class could have been implemented in my teaching lessons. My coach also helped me a lot by collaborating in all my classes, so the classes I prepared were thought to be taught with two teachers’ support. I also had the advantage of having a class with only a few students, and this allowed me to be closer to them and to do different types of activities than if I had been teaching a big class.
All things I have discussed have contributed to the achievement of my lesson plan’s objectives, but I think that what helped me the most was the classroom observation period. Acting as an observer for a period of time allowed me to create a detailed classroom profile and establish concrete classroom needs that my lesson could satisfy, as well as becoming familiar with students while they became familiar with me before teaching.
My teaching practicum has not all been peaches and cream, however, and as I said at the beginning, I have to reflect on it in order to learn from it. I think there where a few things I have not achieved:
The first one is that I never had enough time to finish all the activities I planned, and it happened again and again. It was like a sort of ‘just in case attitude’, a sort of desperation for having lots of materials prepared just in case students may have been really fast in doing the activities or the computers may not have worked. This last point allows me to talk about technical problems; they were not very frequent, but they still happened.
Another one is that maybe I did not attach enough importance to correcting all the activities. I corrected the activities and I gave my feedback, but sometimes I wonder if I could stress more on that so the students do not repeat the same mistakes. I preferred to work on new activities rather than working again and again on those that were finished.
And lastly, the most important one and still unknown to me, is how the teacher can manage with those students that show no interest for learning. How can the teacher manage if their parents do not buy them the books? How can the teacher manage a student’s conflict in which the parents do not do anything but praising their son/daughter. According to that, I felt myself as totally lacked of resources. I sometimes wondered what I could do to motivate them, and despite the fact that sometimes there are things that escape from teacher hands, I think I have failed on solving that problem. But if I were asked of what I would change if I had to start again, I would not be able to give an answer to that, either.
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