TEACHING PRACTICE, WHAT AN EXPERIENCE!!

Adriana Norato

Publicado en Capital Letter No. 4

Noviembre de 2003

Student teachers take advantage of the teaching practice because it gives them the opportunity to learn and experience the teacher's role inside and outside the classroom. According to an English teacher, the teaching practice lets students face the reality of becoming a teacher in one of the places they can teach, the school. In addition, she said that in the school student teachers identify and develop their strengths and find out their weaknesses. Based on those discoveries, student teachers, teacher mentors and assessors can work together in an environment of trust to build a context of reflection and to find all strategies needed to overcome the different situations faced in daily classroom life such as the inability to make yourself understood, teaching in an heterogeneous big group, and having courses marked with 'some' particularities which affect the atmosphere of the teaching-learning process.

At the very beginning of your practice you may feel nervous, as anyone can experience in a new situation, but as time passes you feel more comfortable with yourself, and more conscious of your role and responsibilities. It is very necessary to appreciate your assessor's advice on how to improve your performance as a teacher and also on some attitudes one needs to reflect upon. Therefore, assessors based mainly on observation give you not only their own view about your teaching but students' feelings during the class.

Although English Language Studies at the University give you theoretical bases to be a student teacher, there are some aspects to keep in mind like preparing lesson plans consciously, revising grammar, paying attention to teaching methods, to the amount and quality of your teacher talk and also students talk, among other aspects. Furthermore, a student teacher must be open minded, so he or she can take advantage of the guidance coming from different sources: teacher mentors, assessors, other student teachers or simply another  experienced teacher.

The teaching practice as teaching itself is a process based on hard work and specially, on self-reflection. So, the teaching practice  becomes a reflective practice of a personal and professional development that involves thoughtfullyconsidering one's own experiences in applying knowledge to practice while being coached by professionals in the discipline (Schon, 1996).

In conclusion, during the time you are a practitioner, you have to keep in mind you are 'the teacher' and work managing the class, teaching the concepts, paying attention to students' assistance, their behavior, the school rules and those teacher meetings schools hold at the end of each academic period. Doing the teaching practice becomes a challenge day by day in which every little aspect, including those terrible and disappointing days one may have, should be seen as a tool that should be taken advantage from.

Schon, D.A. (1996). Educating the reflective practitioner.