Reflection and Recommendations

 

    Final Reflection

As a requirement to graduate from the major of Teaching and translation of English it is mandatory for the students to accomplish several activities, and one of them is the professional practice where the student has to complete several activities as it is the 60 hours of teaching practice at an educational institution. The student of this project performed her teaching practice at a Bilingual elementary school close to her town, in Paraíso of Cartago. The student was in charge of teaching one group of first graders and to assist the mentor teacher with two groups of second and third graders. After completing the 60 hours of teaching practice and 60 hours of planning and designing materials here it is her final reflection on what she learned from her weaknesses and strengths during the  professional teaching practice and her experience and perspective of her teaching practice.

Something that is always important is to reflect on what we did well or not well during a project, so we as continuous learners can improve our performance on everything we decided to accomplish. In this case, after I finish my teaching practice can reflect on my performance as an elementary teacher or as a teacher in general and I noticed some important aspects to improve as it is the time management, the classroom management, the involvement with parents, and the use of most important language strategy for ESL.

Regarding time management sometimes it is difficult to calculate the specific time that an activity may take because it all would depend on the students’ abilities, also it is important to learned how to handle time when it is about designing materials, if you do not have enough time to create your materials the activity may not have the same impact. I noticed through this experience that sometimes I planned activities that took more time that I had planned or took less time that I thought and if you do not have back up activities it can be problematic. I also noticed that I had great ideas for activities but it would took more materials that the ones available and sometimes there was not enough time to create the materials needed for those ideas, so some activities I just could not performed because of that or the materials were poor so students does not appreciate the activity in the same way. I learned through this the importance of planning well the activities so students would have to work fast or get bored because they finished earlier, by taking into consideration the students’ abilities after observation them, such as the time the consume to color in or to cut out or to glue, to write on their notebooks and so on, and always think of an activity that can be your back up in case that they finish the lesson plan earlier that you expect, I noticed once that it was very difficult for me to improvise an activity for the students after they finish all the activities I had planned.  And the same at the time I had to create materials, if you have a lesson plan full of activities that need a lot of materials you should think about it more and change some of them so you will not to do more than what you can, and also to see if the material you plan for an activity is worthy and if the students will really take advantage of it or it is just material to complement an activity ( which is not bad but if you can preside from it, so it is not worthy).

I also noticed as a weaknesses of mine the involvement with parents, students should write the instructions of what we were about to do during the class otherwise parents will think that the students did nothing and they would be able to study with them. I learned the importance of let parents know what we did so I started getting used to write the instructions or the topics that would be covered in that lesson and tell students to write it on their notebooks. other weakness that I noticed and I must correct is to use the target language all the time, it means English, students are not used to speak in English so for teachers sometimes it is easier to use the native language, but the idea is that they get involve with the language so I should talked to them in English all the times, and I noticed that sometimes students are lazy and they did not want to pay enough attention so when I gave instructions in English they started saying that they did understand so I would translate it for them instead of explained it in a different way so they could get it.

But not everything was wrong, I think I did well some other things. For me was very important to have their trust and that they would not feel bad with me, so I open a space where they could share with me whatever they wanted to share, I think this is important specially of you are there in the middle of the year, or as I was (just for a couple of weeks) and so on. I also noticed something from this experience that I would like to keep doing and it is the individual attention, every day I tried to see the individual students improvement, If they got stuck with something try to explained to them the topic in a different way and verify at the next day that they did understand in that other way.

At the beginning of my teaching practice I was scared because I had never taught kids before, I did not know how to explain grammar, at least they were students how could write and read so it was an advantage, but still I was accustomed to another way of explaining topics, specially grammar, so I was really scared of how to do it, but once that I observed my mentor teacher and once that I give the first topic I felt better, I now I can say that I was pretty good at it, and kids always understood what I explained I prove that by verify that they were able to complete the activities that require that previous knowledge. 

One of my expectations, or let’s say that one of my objectives, was to show to the teacher and students that there are different ways to learn English, that it can be fun and at the same time they would learned and apply it to the real life, and that is something that I am proud of; every time the mentor teacher told “what a nice activity”, every kids laugh, and  every activity successfully complete and by successful I mean that the purpose or objective was accomplish because the students were able to apply their knowledge shows me what a great job I did, that the strategies choose were accurately and that my activities were effective.

Teach kids is not easy, it is difficult to find the correct strategies and activities for those strategies, it is difficult to find material according to their level proficiency and it is not easy to manage time, especially when you have to also give reports and assigned homework to the students, in a short time, while you are teaching; but I have to be  thankfull for this opportunity because I learned so much form it, now I may say that I need more experience to learn more but I am ready to start teaching, I know my weaknesses and strengths and I need to keep work on it. Great 60 hours.