Teaching Practical Reflection : Week 1

( This is a repost, I have deleted the old reflections. Sorry for being so unorganized ) 

It has been six days into my Teaching Practical ( Supposedly two weeks, minus the public holiday and exam days ) now. How am I feeling? Overwhelmed ; introduction to tired, introduction to disappointment, introduction to frustration. Every emotions that I am feeling right now , are just a  drop of the whole emotion. Who would have thought teaching can be so complicated to your own feelings?

So here are some of the reflections I had for the past six days in school.

    I realized that ‘normal skills ‘ are not enough to be a teacher. You need to have ‘teacher’s skills PRO ‘. Like seriously. I thought I can implement my past experience into class what hey behold, 14 year old are nowhere near to AIESEC newbies or young adults. As clueless as they may be, 14 year old needs a different skills to be handle.

2.       The face of your students can sometimes cause frustrations. Yes, we had simulated teaching before coming to the real school but conducting a class with some 6 playful, interactive and responsive students are nothing similar to this. Your lesson will be disturb by,

 “ CIkgu, bolehkah saya berjumpa xxx “

“Cikgu, bolehkah saya hantar buku in pada Cikgu xxx “

 “ walao wehh teacher, need to speak English also? “

 “Teacher, got PJ later no need learn lah “

3.       Organizing your lesson plan. All this while we had the privilege of finding variety of sources, materials for our lesson plan. Submit it to your lecture and there you go assignment is done. Now, you have to think about this one boy that will not move away from his place. This one girl that prefers doing ‘ keceriaan class’ rather than having English lesson. These two girls that never look you in your eye. This one noisy boy at the back of the class who always adds comments to your lesson. On top of that, you have to make sure to cover the language skills, grammar skills, the theme of the week, keep track of the home works- mark them and make sure students get it back by next week.

4.       I realized that lessons must go on despite whatever it is happening with you. You’re feeling sad? You’re having your PMS? You don’t feel like teaching? Students do not care about that at all. You are given this responsibility of teaching them of giving them some take away lesson that they can feel that it is worth it to be present in school that day. You try your best to make the lesson interactive, interesting and fun enough for the students so that they have at least something to look forward to for English class. You made rules that no one is allowed to speak in any language other than English in your class so that they have at least 1% effort of speaking in English. Students want to see your efforts, they don’t want to see the fragile side of you. Because it matters, because now you are a teacher – someone they look up to.

5.       Some students will be in their own world, no matter how hard you try to get their attention. It might be with their personality, it might be with their family background heck it might be because they are just not interested in school.

So there you go, if you ask me ‘ How’s your practical? this is my answer. 8 more weeks to go , hopefully my current perspective will change by then. InsyaAllah. I need all the support available, either amaze-balls food or just a shoulder to cry on.