Friday, May 25, 2007

Learning to teach

Last year I had my first experience in front of a real class. I had the opportunity to do the teaching trainings in ninth and eighth year with my classmate and friend, Monica. The first group was a big one and the second was a smaller one but with a higher level of the foreign language.
The thing is that we started with the students of ninth year. It was a class of twenty-three girls and eighteen boys and they seemed not to be very interested in learning the language. We observed the class during almost two months and then we began the practices. The English class began at half past seven and it was not easy for us to catch their attention at that time as they were still asleep and it was also difficult for us to encourage them to get involved with the language. Besides, they misbehaved and we had to do a great effort to deal with all these difficulties but fortunately, we had a great teacher who helped us to carry out with them.
The second group was completely different. Personally, I have to say that it was a pleasure working with them. They were twenty-one students who seemed to love English and they were willing to participate in all our classes (which is the dream of every teacher of English) and although the level they were working with required a lot of effort from us, I felt incredible comfortable with them. When I was in front of the class I felt as if it would be my own, and my classmate and I had the opportunity to choose how to work with them.
We share extraordinary moments with these groups and although the difficulties we had at the beginning, all this helped me to realize that I have the ability (though I still have several things to learn) to teach. Because perhaps you sometimes doubt about your choice and this experience helped me a lot to appreciate this career. Every time I was giving my class in front of the students and teachers I never felt judged about what I was doing. Of course I made a lot of mistakes being there, but our teacher facilitated our job and exploded our minds to prepare creative tasks for the students. Now that I believe I have the capacity to teach, I decided to improve in what I do everyday and try to do my best.

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