Teaching practice

Hi there,

Honestly, teaching practice wasn’t any stressful event for me and it wasn’t he result of my potential special abilities or predispositions. The point is that teaching isn’t anything new to me as I’ve been teaching English for one and a half year in a private language school. I dealt with university students, adults, teenagers and kids. For this reason, it wasn’t a very big deal for me.

My personal reflection on teaching.
Teaching is like music. You must feel it and devote yourself to it. I think the best way to illustrate my point of view is by drawing analogy to musicians who play jam-session. When I stand in front of my students I play my music; free, spontaneous and interactive. I try to sense when it is the right time to apply some patterns and previously prepared plans and when it is necessary to improvise and catch the unpredicted flow. I don’t believe in the concept of “The teacher’s mask” which assumes that a good teacher should pose for somebody else during their classes and play a role of a mentor. It doesn’t work like this… What teachers need to do is to be themselves, be natural, be human, and humane when necessary. Another important point is that regardless of the number of academic titles we have, it is necessary to remember we are learning too. We have the right not to know the answer and we should be honest about that with our students, otherwise we can seriously hurt them, well in an abstract sense. It is crucial to be careful because we deal with people and our mistakes can easily affect their future life and learning.

As far as my studies go, nothing has changed. I wanted to be a teacher and still I can’t imagine my life without doing this. Despite the fact that there are a lot of useless subjects which make me furious and sometimes depressed, I would never change my studies.

I assume that most of my post is irrelevant to the topic but at least it was from the bottom of my heart.

Take care,