First Reflection-Pre-teaching (September 2, 2012)
Hello everyone, I wish you all had a great long holiday. For me these two months passed so rapidly. Without realizing it, our training is ahead of us. In the beginning, I felt scared, confused and worried, but after receiving the guidance book prepared by Dr. Adel and the faculty, I felt so relieved. Gradually those negative emotions were gone because I’ve known what I should do step by step. As a novice teacher, I believe certain things are crucial for us.
First of all—Punctuality. It’s not just entering the classroom on time; it’s also about reaching the school on time or even earlier. In this way, we have enough time to prepare for ourselves and are able to deal with unexpected incidents.
Second—Preparation. A teacher should never enter the classroom without any preparation. This does not just apply for the new teacher, but for all teachers, no matter you are experienced or not. We need to know every bit of the thing we are teaching. When we stand in the front of the classroom, the students look up to us. They believe we know everything and we can answer every question they ask. What if a student asks a very simple question, and we don’t know? Situations like this are common in teaching and learning. It may happen once or twice, it’s fine, but not many times. We should never find excuses for ourselves for not knowing the stuff we are teaching.
Third—Confidence. One, confidence comes from a good preparation. Second, it comes from ourselves. We have to believe ourselves. Many of our seniors did a good job in training and had a fantastic time with the school teachers and students. We need not be afraid; instead, let’s think about those cute, lovely and simple students.
Fourth—Stand in students’ shoes. We were once in the middle school studying, so we should think what kind of teacher we liked and why we liked certain teachers and why sometimes we even hated some. Humans are similar. Our students have the similar thinking as us. Moreover, when students make mistakes, don’t do their homework, sleep, chat or be passive in the class, we shouldn’t scold them immediately, but look for the reason of their behaviors. Why do they do that? Give them a chance to speak for themselves first, then help them. We can’t think of ourselves as a superior to them, no. We are there to help those students. So be tolerant and understanding.
Fifth—Be fair. I told myself many a time: “Wendy, you don’t like your primary school teachers and until now, you still dislike them because they are biased and they have their elite students on their mind and give them special care. So you should never be a teacher like that. Don’t be judgmental.” Whether the students like English, whether they are polite, hard-working, pretty, lovely or lazy, ordinary-looking, bad in English, let’s not judge them and give everyone equal attention. I know it’s very hard in practice because we are human, and we have feelings. So do our best.
Furthermore—Patience. I don’t think I have to describe the significance of this point. But just one more thing, however angry you are, never show your long face to the students. Don’t even frown, sigh. Students can feel it. Students can feel whether this teacher is willing to teach them.
Lastly—Keep learning. Try to minimize our grammatical mistakes in the classroom and continue learning English and enhance ourselves on a daily basis. Because having a good command of English is the key to a good English teacher.
There are many other things important to us. But the above mentioned are my thoughts before our training that I’d like to share with all of you.
All in all, I wish the best luck for everyone!
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