TEACHING

Daria DavydovaGroup 753

My own experience

It all started with a noise, a cry, a glance- it was certainly not me making noises and crying, no, even shouting but it was for sure me who glanced at the whole class while they were having a usual routine as they thought and I glanced, not looked or stared, timidly, afraid to look in their eyes full of energy and what I thought-disrespect at first.And I was right there was no respect towards me…yet…I had to earn it.

Of course 1.5 months wasn’t merely enough to get to know these individuals, these young men and women ( as they seemed so adolescent to me though they were only 13-14).Of course I had more chances to know my “English” group of 12 as I was about to carry out my teaching practice at school #122. So I was attached to an 8th grade and my main goal for the first week was to have a study practice during which I observed the group in the process of their studying and I got to meet their teacher who to some extent became my supervisor, she was an encouraging one, experienced and proficient.

I was sitting at the back of the classroom and was observing the students- my future students.

I have to be honest and confess that I am an absolutely “people” person: I enjoy getting to know them- it is incredible how different we all are! And though we can put a label on a person, a stereotype there is NO absolutely no same person in the whole wide world! Even twins are different.

Those young people could dress like some musician, movie star or pretend to be someone they are not but through this blur of “fame” I could see vulnerable, bright children with the eyes of sky colour, ready to learn something new and excited about new experience of a young lady watching persistantly behind their backs, literally.

I observed the children for 5 days in a row and could tell that they were at least curious in what I was doing, they came up to me and asked questions. I waited in anticipation that I could inculcate in the children a liking for learning English, that I could pass on knowledge to them and still keep the discipline.

This year I had an opportunity to improve my teaching quality as in the quote “an ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching”; for it doesn’t matter how much I was taught about actually being a teacher until I had a chance to try to be one, until I put my skills into practice.

First of all this year my experience was quite different from the one that I had last year: coming from a regular school to a specialized in foreign languages was quite a contrast, to realize I had to have other objectives such as developing communicative skills, to improve the students’ basic skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking, basically just proceeding by stages from the simple to the complex.

I had to bring out the best in every child and imbue the young with a love for a foreign language and of course I couldn’t but stick to individual approach.

Giving my students marks was the hardest thing I encountered along with doing lesson plans required for specialized schools as I felt pressure of the level of this school.

I think assessing students’ works is the most common problem in the history of teaching because a person truly loving children will always struggle with evaluating; what is really important is to separate evaluating the student as a person and a student as the one who studies, to evaluate not the person but his progress.

But it’s not as easy as it seems because the person and the student is a compound human so if the teacher doesn’t know this or that person it’s hard to tell whether there’s progress or not. For example, I know that one of my students is shy in the public but does an excellent job on his written tests, if I didn’t know this particular feature of his I would think he is really behind everyone in the class but knowing it I asked him oral assignments during the break when he wasn’t so shy around his classmates.

As we all know all students prefer to play hard at first but it takes courage and desire to help them open up. Since our topic was “challenges” there was a text about former “superman” Christopher Reeve whose life was never the same after an incident with a horse. He was stuck in the wheel chair for the rest of his life. My desire was to show the students one more “desperate” at the first look case _ Nick Vojchich from Australia who was born without limbs, his life every day was a challenge and I showed the class a video about him in which he encourages young people to never give up.

It was truly inspiring to watch the video but moreover the faces of my “tough” children who have softened up and probably realized that we were all people, including me and after that the lesson it was easier for me to communicate with the students and see their true personalities.

I would like to conclude with the words “ A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or a kind of car I drove…But the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child” and let it be the motto of every teacher and let no hardships or mistakes or problems scare away me and other teachers from teaching and “Let it be the challenge”.

“While we try to teach our children all about life, children teach us what life is all about”