Some Personal Stories From My Teaching Experience
There is no doubt that teaching is one of the most common professions in the world. Countless teachers are busy conducting lessons all over the world every second. We usually hear stories from the students about their lessons while teachers are usually stereotyped as just some knowledgeable people with the required skills to teach certain subjects. So how about reading some stories from a teacher? In this post, I am going to share some of my own experiences and stories as an EFL teacher.
The very first lesson
It was a hot day in April, 2013. As the final assignment of my “Teaching Practice” course in college, I had to teach a group of high school students. They were about 16 years old on average. I had my lesson plan, materials and even a back-up plan, I was ready!
As soon as I entered the classroom, I noticed that the students were looking at me and asking each other the same question, “Who is she?”. It was a strange feeling for me as I was in the center of their attention. So I thought to myself that it was the perfect time to start the lesson with a lot of energy. I took a deep breath and said, “Good afternoon, everyone!” The rest of the lesson went well as I had planned.
When I look back, I realize that one thing I hadn’t considered before that lesson was the students’ initial reaction to me being there as their teacher. I think I should have pictured that moment more in order to prepare myself mentally.
Adept young learners
Teaching young learners is such an interesting experience. As teachers, we often get to work with pupils, who learn fast even though they have a very limited attention span. The fact that young learners tend to pay less attention in terms of duration had always concerned me until one day I received a phone call from a parent. She told me that her daughter, who was my student then, had been spending a lot of time playing with her dolls and making them talk English by speaking their lines herself. This student in particular didn’t seem so focused in the classroom, but she was, indeed, learning!
Needless to say, I was thrilled after the conversation I had with the parent. The intriguing situation with this student really got me thinking. It reminded me of the fact that even though young learners cannot pay nearly as much attention as an average adult does, they learn so fast.
Cooperation with the parents
I remember one of the students I used to tutor. He was a 6-year-old boy, back then he was a complete beginner. At first, I met his father in a café. We had some tea and talked about my student. Therefore, I had some input about the student’s personality in terms of interests, background and so on. Based on the information I had received from the father,
I showed up at my student’s house with a lot of interesting materials. This helped me and my students so much as I was already feeling confident and the student felt appreciated since the activities were chosen in accordance with his interests.
This gave me further awareness of the fact that parents’ contribution plays a big role when it comes to teaching. I believe that this simple, however, fruitful experience is just one of countless ways of cooperating with them.
Teaching adults
Traditionally, when we think of a teacher, a picture of a lot of kids and an adult (the teacher) teaching them a subject comes to mind. Interestingly, that is also how I used to picture it for the most part. When I was in college, I always thought that I would be working with kids mainly, if not only. However, there are many grown-ups who have a lot of interest in learning English or improving it. My very first experiences as a teacher concerned working with young learners for a few years. So, when I had my first adult group, a few things caught my attention immediately.
So, I entered the classroom, after some warm up and lead-in, I asked them to open their books, but they had already opened them, looking at the page we were going to cover that day. This made me realize how responsible adults can be, which is an advantage. It kind of misled me into thinking that it would be a very easy lesson to cover.
I was about 20 minutes into the lesson, some of my students were so reluctant and it was very challenging to get them to participate, something that can be dealt with more easily when it comes to younger learners. I started thinking to myself what I could do to get them to participate more, nominating them more often, giving feedback etc. This helped to an extent, but they were hard to change.
My conclusion was that teaching adults that day had its own advantages since they were responsible and paid attention. However, it was hard to work with some of them as they were hesitant and a bit hard to get through. It is something every teacher needs to take into consideration with some ideas to overcome by making the hesitant students more comfortable in various ways.
Conclusion
When I look back, I can recall many bittersweet memories from my teaching experience, and I appreciate all of them. There is no doubt that some things went well while some did not. However, reflecting on them by not being afraid to be objective has helped me a lot in terms of improving my teaching. With this in mind, I learned to appreciate all my memories, some of which I shared in this post.
