Self and Peer Evaluation

After finishing the Teaching Practicum II course, I am very satisfied with all the new things I have learned, and with the results that, as a group, we were able to achieve. Now, I am finishing my fifth year at the university, I have successfully approved more than the 90% of my classes, including Teaching Practicum I, and II, and I can say that I feel very proud of that. I have also been able to get some experience in the teaching field, besides the two Teaching Practicum classes, I have also been able to get a job teaching English at E4CC, an academy that teaches English for the call center industry, and also at Universidad Don Bosco, teaching English to the employees of that institution.

The first weeks in this course represented a challenge for me. I felt really comfortable with the idea of teaching teenagers, however I realized we were going to be using a new framework called ECRIF. This resulted difficult for me, it used to take me a lot of time to plan a lesson, and I used to run out of ideas really quick. Nonetheless, after practicing several times, this became easier. Now, I can easily plan a lesson using ECRIF, and I feel that this framework helps me as a teacher to be more organized, and it also helps my students to achieve their goals since it is more flexible compared to other frameworks. I was really happy to see the great improvement some of my classmates had throughout this course. Deyanira for example, now she seems to be more comfortable in front of students, she is now very creative when it comes to activities, and she has learned to gain the control of the class. There are few areas of opportunity, however her improvement is evident. Another example would be Luis, who had a special challenge since his lessons where the longest, lasting 90 minutes each. Nonetheless, he was able to deal with that situation, he showed excellent time management and creativity to maintain students’ attention for such a long period of time. Besides that, he also seems to feel more comfortable while conducting a class.

Considering all the aspects I have mentioned in the previous paragraphs, and more, I confidently say that I have achieved the objective of this course. I am now able to plan a lesson using ECRIF in an efficient period of time, I can analyse and assess a lesson designed by someone else, I have plenty of ideas about activities that will help my students to acquire specific information, and I have experience on how to deal with teenagers in the classroom.

The last thing I would like to say is that this course was really useful and satisfying, I am sure that all of my classmates would say the same. I am looking forward to complete my studies, and this put me a step closer to that. Thank you for reading.

Physical and Psychosocial Development of Adolescent Students

This week we had the opportunity to learn about the different changes that adolescents face during this phase of life. When I think about my own adolescence, I realize that it was not so shocking for me because, luckily, I was very well informed about the things that would happen to me, at least in a physical way.

Since I was a child, I have always been surrounded by older people, in other words I was always the youngest among my friends and relatives. Therefore, a lot of -good and not so good- information came to me about  what to expect during those years of my life. Because of this, I did not have any issues dealing with my physical development. On the other hand, when it comes to my psychosocial development, I did not know what to expect. In fact, I was not even aware I was going through that. During my childhood things were easy, I had everything I needed inside my family, my older brother and cousins were my best friends, and I was very dependent of my mother. However, when I entered adolescence I did not feel that comfortable with them anymore, but I did not want to be alone either, so I started to make more friends to the point that I felt more comfortable with my friends than with my own relatives. Besides that, I also think that at some point I struggled a little with my own identity. I realized that I was just following my own brother's steps, trying to imitate him somehow, and I did not felt that I was being myself. At the end, I think I was able to find my own identity, and up to this point of my life, I feel really comforta
ble with who I am.

After studying the different things that happen during adolescence, now I understand why teenagers feel misunderstood most of the time. In my opinion, the main reason is that they do not understand themselves, and they do not know what is happening in their bodies and minds. Adolescence can be a contradictory stage. They want to be independent, but they do not want responsibilities; they want to fit and be accepted by society, but they want to feel unique and special; they do not want to be attached to their parents anymore, but they are afraid to face the world on their own. However, they are not guilty of this, is just that they are going trough hormonal changes which affect their moods and behaviors. I believe that parents and adults in general should be informed about this, to be able to take care of them by warning them about the threats of life without interfering with their freedom. Also, adults should thy to empathize a little bit more adolescents, since this stage of life can be difficult and shocking.

As a teacher, I would like to help my students by being a guidance in this stage of life, by making them feel comfortable with themselves and others, by increasing their level of confidence, and by encouraging them to be themselves, and by motivating them to have a goal in life and to stay focused on it.

Meeting and Dealing with Changes in the Brain of a Teenager

New year, new semester, new experiences. I just started my Teaching Practicum II course, in which I will have the opportunity to work with teenagers. There were many ideas about what to expect from this class before it actually started. I felt excited, personally I feel more comfortable working with adolescents, although I know that it is one of the biggest challenges that teachers all around the world face. Teenagers are well know for their miss behaviour towards parents and teachers, that is why I have been looking forward to take a course in which I learn how to deal with this situation.

As part of our first assignment in this course, we conducted an investigation about the development of brain during adolescence. While doing my research in the National Institute of Mental Health (www.nimh.nih.gov) and Brain Connection (www.brainconnection.brainhq.com) websites, I learned something I did not know before, that the human brain is still under construction during adolescence. In fact, the brain doesn’t look like that of an adult until the early 20s. The main difference between a teenage brain and a fully mature brain lies in the frontal lobe, which is still under development during adolescence. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that we use to make rational decisions. Thus, adolescents behave more emotional and impulsive than adults because  they are not making decisions with their frontal lobe, but with their amygdalas. Once adulthood is reached, the overall focus of brain activity seems to shift from the amygdala to the frontal lobes. This fact influences many aspects of the lives of teenagers, who might go through difficult times while facing adolescence.

Considering all of the information stated above, I believe that working with teenagers might represent a challenge. Nonetheless, it is a challenge that I am looking forward to face. I have had few experience teaching teenagers before, and I have had both good and not so good experiences. Therefore, my expectations for this course are to learn a lot about adolescents, their behaviors, and how to deal with them. I must admit that I feel excited about this, and I feel committed to learn as much as possible. I also believe that this course will help me a lot to empathize with teenagers, because they are not just rebel monsters as many people think, they are going trough a stage in life in which not only their bodies, but also their brains, emotions, and feelings are changing, and most of the time they are not aware of this. That is why, guidance is important for them, and I expect to learn how to be a good mentor for my future teenage students.

Group 2: Lesson 3

This time I would like to write about the last lesson imparted by group number 2, conformed by Nancy, Jacky, Gloria, Brenda, and Janeth. This lesson was developed on October 11th, 2015 and I personally believe, they had an outstanding performance.

 I would like to star by saying that I loved the material they used for this lesson, it was really colorful and it was definitely appealing to students' eyes. They managed to make a very created variation of both the Welcome and Good bye song, they provided students with material somehow related to the lyrics of the songs, and students evidently enjoyed that.

Their topic was an extension of the topic we had presented in the previous class, "My Dream Job", this time the customs were given to students who represented a profession during the whole lesson. They had prepared a wide variety of activities to practice the content being studied, and their goal was to prepare students to be able to write sentences stating what they wanted to be. Something I really liked is that they took advantage of the fact that the classroom we were using is really big, and they created activities in which students could move around the classroom and have some fun. That is something I would love to do, however it is important to know that not always will we have the chance to have a room as big as the one we were using during our Teaching Practicum. Nonetheless, the idea was lovely, and it would be a matter of adapting those activities to the classroom that we have available.

Of course, there were minimal details that could be improved, one of them was the pronunciation, in my opinion, we need to be really careful when introducing vocabulary, and we need to emphasized in the pronunciation of words that are unknown for our students. Also, I noticed that some of the group members were not matching the level of energy of their partners, and it is important for us to maintain a good energy, and a positive attitude during the whole lesson.

At the end of the class, students seemed really satisfied with the lesson, and during the production staged, it was clear that they had reached their objective. Overall, it was a great experience to see this grouop present their lesson.

Group 1: Lesson 3

It was our turn to teach again on November 9th, 2015. This time our topic was "My Dream Job", and we had to prepare a Listening class in which students were expected to identify professions and say what they want to be when they grow up.

This time we needed to be really prepared, since this was our last lesson and we could not afford to commit the same mistakes we had committed in previous lesson. Because of this, we took more time to prepare ourselves, we had more meetings and we took the time to get material as a team. The first thing we decided was to take advantage of the topic of the lesson, and we decided we were going to wear customs of professions, and we were going to prepare some for our students as well. It was really funny to pick our customs and to wear them. However, we needed to be careful not to distract our students from our lesson. 

Once we had our lesson plan, and materials prepared, it was time to teach. It was so gratifying to see how much kids were enjoying our lesson, they were clearly excited about the customs we had prepared for them and for ourselves. They showed an amazing willingness to participate in all the activities, starting from the welcome song. This positive attitude lead to positive results, since they easily acquired the vocabulary and the structures being presented to them. This was evident during our Post Listening, and our Wrap Up stages, in which they easily performed as requested. At some point, however, we needed to be careful since their excitement could cause them to distract and lose their focus from the actual lesson. However, this did not happen and I, personally, felt satisfied with the results at the end of the class.

Feedback session this week was conducted differently, we received direct feedback from the teachers observing us, and we were expected to have worked on everything we needed to improve from lesson one. Among the things mentioned during feedback, we were told not to be afraid to use our body language and to model instructions whenever needed, we were told to be careful with the level of excitement of our students, and to use activities to help them calm down if the it is required. Our material was better this time, flashcards were big enough for students to see them, and they were bright and colorful.

It was our last opportunity to teach a class to that small group of kids, and I can say that I really enjoyed the time we spent together. And I appreciate all the feedback I received, This was a very satisfactory experience.

Worksheet prepared by the group for our last lesson

Group 3: Lesson 2

On October 26th, 2015 group number three, conformed by Vanessa, Wanda, Yennifer, Deyanira and Luis, had their second opportunity to direct a class for our students. It was evident they had taken into consideration the feedback they received on their first lesson, and the result was a very good class.

Their topic was "My Town", in which students were expected to be able to talk about places in their community. Overall, the members of the group seemed very confident and comfortable performing in front of the students, and that always results in a positive attitude from students as well. This was not the exception as students were really engaged in all the activities the group had prepared for them, and were willing to participate.

I liked the material the group had prepared, it was very colorful and bright, catching students' attention, I also liked the activities they did since they were not common and students seemed to enjoy them a lot. For example, they introduced the new vocabulary with a game that simulated a city, and students had to decide what to place to visit. It was a very creative way to introduce the vocabulary and to warm up the class. Peronally, I was surprised about how fast students were able to master the structure that was being presented by Luis, and then they were able to practice it using a spinning wheel, which was a very creative resource used by the group. At the end of the class, students were excited to practice what they had learned, and it was clear that the goal had been reached succesfully.

There are still details that could be improved by the members of this group, like classroom management, and voice projection, but at this point, we are all still learning, and in my personal opinion, they did a great job last class.

Group 1: Lesson 2

It was October 19th, 2015 and it was our turn to teach our second lesson. This was a particularly hard week, however, we got to learn how to deal with unexpected situations. Due to climate conditions in our country, the Ministry of Education decided to suspend classes in all public and private institutions, and this impacted our Teaching Practicum course too.

First of all, things got complicated when we lost most of our material due to the rain. We had to prepare new material minutes before the class, and because of this, we started our lesson a couple of minutes late. Besides this, we were really shocked when we saw that only two students had presented that day. However, we had to value the effort this two kids made to get to class that day, and we had to teach our lesson to them.

Our topic was "My House", we prepared a lesson in which students were going to learn vocabulary about household objects, and also the Possessive Adjectives, and the Demonstrative Pronouns. It was hard to adjust the activities we had prepared to only two students. Specially, since they were one girl and one boy, and the boy was clearly shy to work along with her. Nonetheless, we found the way to adapt or even improvise during our lesson, and in our Production stage, we noticed we were able to achieve our goal. 

After the class was over, we had our usual feedback session, in it we were told to be more prepared for unexpected situations like all the ones we experienced that day. We were advised to have a back up plan, and to always maintain a positive attitude no matter what. We took care of the things we were told to improve the previous week, we created bigger flashcards and we gave students enough time to see them during the lesson.

After all, I am glad we had the opportunity to go through this situation, since this is something that every teacher will face sooner or later, and now I know how to deal with it when it happens to me again.