Coming up roses- For English Teachers to be

Final report

ELTE 406
Teaching Practice

In
this report,I am  required to reflect on
the overall Teaching Practice Course experience. I am  required to provide specific examples to
support your arguments:  Classroom
observations, lesson planning, pre-observation meetings, formal teaching
sessions, post-observation feedback meetings, my blogging experience, and how
all these processes contributed to the process of becoming a teacher.

My
teaching practice was in Prep.School of EMU. I had 18 students in the class of
intermediate level of English.  My
cooperative teacher was helping me a lot with advices and not only.

Classroom
observations for me personally were very important and effective, I gained a
lot.

At
the very beginning I didn’t like it , specially recording part and the theme of
my lessons ( reading)

I had
my reasons not to like it because even back to my school years I did not like
it cos my own teacher was doing it in a very boring way and people were
sleeping in the classroom – that’s what happened to my first reading class – it
was good before having a nap.

But
then my instructor explained to me that to make it better and more interesting
I should “Start the lesson from behind the corner” which means to start it from
general conversation and to make conversation interesting and catchy.

Among
all possible challenges that could happen in my teaching practice: time
management and interest appealing teaching were the only problems that I had,
and when I was failing with these two or at least one of these – it really
spoils your teacher’s image. Or when you make a mistake specially a stupid
small mistake and students notice that u messed up – you feel shamed ( that’s
how I felt)

I can
say its just time and more practice helped me to shape my teachers image , like
first impression that I gave my students was that they can play with me anyhow,
but when I understood it and I became serious with all of them – they started
taking me seriously.

For
me personally I don’t really like all these blogs and commenting on-line  because it is proved by reality and by
students themselves that people are lazy to come to blog and leave senseful and
meaningful comments – they prefer to leave smth for the sake of leaving smth .

Actually
to say the truth I don’t really like lesson planning process not cos I think
its useless but just cos I cant make myself sit down and write, I prefer to be
honest and say that most of my lesson plans were planned just in my head but
not on the paper, I don’t like writing anything
- it takes too much time when I can plan the same thing in my head and
if I need then just to make some notes.

I
like the point of material development cos it really helps not only you as a
teacher but mostly students – it helps them to adjust to a lesson. Like
sometimes I could bring additional material or to simplify some tasks or
conversely make it more complicated when I wanted to make my students make the
task consciously and to think over it.for majority to write a comment for
his/her peer is a big deal and if we are talking about leaving comments on blog
it is all about laziness  – students are
lazy to do anything like this, So for me personally it would be more effective
if the same feedback would be done in the classroom during the meetings.

But
at the same time some peole cant tolerate critics right to their face so for
them I think it is better to red it on the blog.

Fine
to post my work on the blog so that everyone can see it  – is very productive because instead of
meeting a person and checking person’s lesson plan I can just read it  on the blog, but conserning feedback and
critics I prefer face to face converstion.

I
cant definitely say that after each pre-observation meeting I could add smth
usefull to my formal teaching and besides I was receiving good advices that I
can apply to my teaching.

Ex; I
had a teaching – reading teaching – and during the pre-observation discussion
my instructor adviced me to use pictures and to ask students if anyone has
tattoos on their body , so that like this we could pass to reading activities
smoothly.

My
cooperative teacher was giving me meaningful advices too, like for ex. When I
didn’t no how to catch students attention she was even helping me during the
class session telling me what to say and what to do at appropriate moment.

I was excited but I was not scared, actually I
was worried about students personal attitude – like sometimes some students
give a teacher attitude, specially when they know that this is your internship
– they will start giving you  attitude or
they will make you feel like you r a fool.

In
general everything was pretty good with the only exception that almost all the
time I was having reading classes and if I had an opportunity I would try now a
listening class.

Actually
I was not so caring about small details which turned out to be very important,
I was not really caring about time management – all these seemd to be not so
crutial for me but actually that’s what makes a lesson.

My only
challenge was to make lesson more vivid – the more vivid it is the more
students will be involved. And I was a kind of scared to wasted my time in case
if students get stuck with smth.

I
didn’t really keen on blogging and if it was optional I wouldn’t ever chose it
as the was to present what I had done. For me personally it is more time
consuming rather than to type and print smth out. For video critics it is good
because you may not an opportunity to come to class but you are still aware of
what your class mates  wrote about the
movie. About lesson planning I have already said that for me personally it is
better to discuss lesson plans face to face rather than to read comments. About
my performance feedback again I prefer to hear it personally rather then to go
to blog and check who wrote and what.

My
cooperative teacher usually was giving me feedback right after teaching , so
for me it was like so far it is fresh let me get my feedback – for me it works
better like this.

The
critics of my supervisor were rather informative and senseful – so I gained a
lot  – and I could apply it.

Even
though I didn’t really like using blog thing –still I think whatever is new is
good for you even though it is hard for me personally – bit it is for my own
good and for my own development…..so I am glad to have this experience.

At
the conclusion I would like to thank Aysegul for being tolerant to my “I DON’T
KNOW HOW TO DO IT”, , thank you for advices and holding this course during this
semester J
J
J