Reflective writing

As I reflect on my experiences observing many different teacher’s

classes and teaching two lessons over the month, I cannot express
how much I have learned by being in the classrooms. First, I began
observing teacher’s classes and start thinking the weaknesses and the
strengths of the lessons. In the beginning, I was not impressed due to
the fact that the classes I saw were regular, so I decided to teach
lessons myself by taking teacher’s permissions. Then, I happened to
teach 4th grade kids in the first week. Before I taught my first lesson
I learned some new techniques, classroom management and games
to play with kids by watching several video lessons on the internet. I
made a lesson plan on top of my head since I had to teach only one
class and followed it. From that lesson I learned a lot of things that I
couldn’t learn from books. When I was about to start a lesson, there
was a strange feeling inside me that says how it goes, so I had to
force myself to begin the class and after starting the class I realized it
was not really hard, only the first a few seconds in the beginning was
the hardest part. Second thing was lack of preparation on a particular
material. If I made a list of words, which I used to play with kids, on
a sheet of paper instead of writing them down on my mobile phone,
it would save quite a bit of time and I only realized that when I faced
an issue that I had to spend time and effort to find where every word
is located. Last lesson I got from the class was the biggest one to me.
Because of the fact that I had to teach only one lesson, I didn’t make
a big deal of classroom management, telling them what I expect
them for my class. In addition to, I was thinking it would take a quite
a bit of time, but after the lesson over my mind had changed to the
fact that if they would follow certain rules that would compensate
the time for telling them simple three rules. I was planning to tell
them when I clap you all should clap back, be silent and look
straight into my eyes and not pack your stuff up until I say the lesson
is over and not leave the room until I say have a nice day. I was
lucky that the first one wasn’t needed since kids behaving properly
and not talking much especially about irrelevant topics towards the
class, so the discipline and control was maintained during the class.
But after the class was over they started packing their stuff up and
leaving before I tell them, so I was convinced that I had to take some
time to tell them not leave the room after the bell rang before I say
goodbye. Even though the kids were thanking me for the class and
asking me to teach the next time and even one kid was hugging me
every time he saw me, but I was felling like I could teach much more
things in 40 minutes, so I decided to observe more teacher’s classes
to work on myself. During my observations, I also learned many
things. While I was observing one lesson I realized that the
classroom atmosphere is crucial due to the fact that the room was
stuffy and I ended up having a little headache after that class. On
another class, I saw a teacher yelling and screaming, trying to have
control over the class in a harsh way and it seemed so bad from the
outside. It was like a teacher didn’t posses a certain quality that a
good, professional teacher should have, so I realized how bad it is to
scream at pupils to shut them up. Also, I found some lessons that
were totally out of control and no matter what the teachers were
trying to do to deal with them, nothing was working. However, one
teacher actually said that she did everything she could but pupils
were keep misbehaving. These occasions I saw convinced more that
if a teacher can’t hold the class from the beginning, later it might be
too late to do so and I believe teachers can take control over class in
a polite way from the beginning by using some techniques.
Furthermore, most of the teachers I saw were kept failing to start the
class at scheduled time and to my way of thinking, they were
blended in that particular issue because of their environment, so I
think it is also crucial to have good colleagues and companions as a
teacher since they can influence you in certain ways. Since, I was so
busy doing my observations the end of the practice had already come
and I got flu at that time. But I had to teach my last class and also I
was thinking how would it be to teach a class being ill, so I decided
to give it a try. This time I faced the higher class 8 th grade pupils and
I reviewed what I had to teach before class. I learned profound
lessons from my last lesson too. As I was sick it was hard to be
approachable and thinking in some ways. So, I realized teachers
better keep trying to keep themselves healthy while they have great
responsibility to fulfill, teaching the future of the generation. My
strength include being determined, goal driven, hard working and
learning. I will use these strengths to the best of my ability when I
have my own class in the future. I want to continue with my teaching
and learning process and obtain my teaching certificate in the near
future. After my observations during this practice, I realized that I
would like to work with higher grade students because I think I
would respond better to them. These observations helped me better
appreciate the teaching profession.