TEACHING

PRACTICE FINAL
ESSAY

MILTON ORLANDO MARTINEZ
TEACHING
PRACTICE I 2014
Teachers are an extremely important facet of any society for a multitude of
reasons. Teachers are the people who educate the youth of society who in turn
become the leaders of the next generation of people. (schooldee.com). Teaching is
not only a profession, it is an art too, because teachers shape and mold
students. This paper has as main purpose to give an idea about how important it is
to be a good teacher, and how a beginner teacher has faced the first formal
teaching experience of his professional life.
In this paper, it will be described the following:
o Teaching critical reflection of TP.
o Systematization of TP process.
o E-portfolio applied to ELT.
o A technological teacher vrs a non-prepared classroom.
o Conclusion.

Teachers can enrich a young generation of children so that the future is a
safe, secure and great place to live in for every person in the society.
(schooldee.com). This profession is surely the most important of all, because
teachers are the ones who educates and make conscience into the future leaders of
a country and the people who will make a direction to society. That is why it is
important to be a prepared and very committed teacher, because we are shaping
human minds, mind which will change lives.

TEACHING CRITICAL REFLECTION OF TP.
In a profession as challenging as teaching, honest self-reflection is key. That
means that we must regularly examine what has worked and what hasn't in the
classroom, despite how painful it can sometimes be to look in the mirror. (Lewis).
To reflect, is an essential task for teachers, because that is how I can realize how I
am performing my Teaching Practice. Me, as a beginner teacher, I have faced some
problems by performing my Teaching Practice, and the most difficult for me has
been the experience, because I have to admit that I feel kind of nervous before
developing each class, but when I am in the process, I feel secure and confortable,
because I know that I am doing my best, and I will improve by the time.
Another thing I have to admit is that at the beginning, I was afraid, because
I was not sure about myself, it was very hard, but I could get it over and I kept
going on. It has been really hard, preparing class; perform them and be aware of
the activities that I have had to develop in order to teach English in a different
way. Through the process of this Teaching Practice I have realized how hard it is to
be a teacher, it is not as easy as I thought, I thought it was one of the easiest jobs,
but it is all the way around, it is one of the hardest and could even be the hardest
job of all. Therefore, I must be prepared and do not accommodate as some other
teachers use to do it.
This Teaching Practice has shown me that I can do a good job as a teacher
that all I need is passion for teaching, then, everything else will be easier, because if
I have passion for doing something, I will enjoy doing every single thing that has
to deal with teaching. I will care about my own improvement and I will try to learn
more and be more prepared. I have opened my eyes and now I can see that the
more passion a teacher has the better teaching process he/she performs. I do not
think that I am a good teacher, I am not even close to it, I have to make a lot of
mistakes first, and then fix them up, I have to make big sacrifices, and learn a lot of
things, I need experience, time, students and my actions will say if I am a good
teacher, otherwise, if I say it, it would be a lie.
During this course, I have understood in a better way how much I have to
push myself in order to improve and keep thinking on being a good teacher one
day, there is a phrase that says Dont stop when youre tired, stop when youre
done. I have faced a lot of problems through the pass of this subject; I have had to
take myself to the limit a lot of times, and honestly, I am tired, I have worked hard,
I have done my best, and it has not been enough sometimes, it means that I have to
go further from my limits and do it better. This is really worthy, I know I will not
be regret about this, because I do not do this because of money, I do it because I
like, I know that money will come, I just have to be patient and enjoy my job.
That is one of the things that I have learnt this semester in this subject.

SYSTEMATIZATION OF TEACHING PRACTICE PROCESS
Teaching Practice process is not a simple thing that is going to be taught
with no preparation, it needs a very deep preparation in order to have good
material to teach, and there are some tools that are called artifacts of the teaching,
they are planning, program, syllabus, outline, lesson plans and rubrics (these are
the artifacts that I have been using during my TP). All of them are very helpful and
essential, without them; there would not be any logical order for a course.

Program
It is a document, in which the topics that will be studied are put in a logical
order, there, we put topics and subtopics that we can study and learn about them,
topics in which we can use structures and teach according to the students needs.
First, the most basic things about the lecture, and when time goes by, there will be
things that will be taught with the base of the first topics and relating them to the
next topic, in order to have sequence and a logical order to facilitate the learning
process for the students.

Syllabus
Syllabi serve several important purposes, the most basic of which is to
communicate the instructors course design (e.g., goals, organization, policies,
expectations, requirements) to students. (cmu.edu). Syllabus contains basically the
information of each unity that will be developed with the students in order to have
more explicit information about what the topics contain and what to teach
according to the needs of the students. Syllabus is very important because it is a
guide for teachers when they are teaching with text books. "The syllabus is a small
place to start bringing students and faculty members back together." (Rubin). It is a
very helpful tool to explain how a course will be developed.

Outline
The syllabus is a planning tool. Writing it guides the instructors
development of the course. Through the development of a syllabus, instructors are
able to set course goals, develop student learning objectives, create and align
assessment plans, as well as establish a schedule for the course. (uleth.ca). An
outline is a very helpful tool in teaching because you can put there all the activities
that you can do in a class, or in the entire course. Can be a guide for making a
lesson plan and also for showing activities that can be modified in order to
improve the process of teaching and get better results.
Planning
One of the most important (principles of good teaching) is the need for
planning. Far from compromising spontaneity, planning provides a structure and
context for teacher and students, as well as a framework for reflection and
evaluation (Spencer, 2003). It is important to plan because there, I could have the
information about the topics that follow to the one that I am teaching and in that
way, I can control or divide the longest topics in order to have a schedule for each
topic with the necessary time to be able to develop it and avoid any
misunderstanding problem or to avoid any missing of any topic in order to show
the content of the topic that I have to develop. In this way, I could make a schedule
about the course and I could have an order with each topic and evaluations that
were necessary.

Lesson Plan
A lesson plan is a detailed guide for teaching a lesson. It's a step-by-step
guide that outlines the teacher's objectives for what the students will accomplish
that day. Creating a lesson plan involves setting goals, developing activities, and
determining the materials that will be used. (Cox). Lesson plans have been very
helpful during my Teaching Practice because they are the map that teachers follow
when teaching and the details that they present have my own style. A lesson plan
is an essential tool that every single teacher needs to have in order to perform a
good Teaching Practice, otherwise, the class could become into a completely mess
and there would not be a logic order of the topics. In my case, it was hard to learn
how to make them but at the end I have learned how to make a lesson plan, I do
not do the perfect, but I do my best and I know that I can improve and I will
improve as much as I can.
Learning how to make a lesson plan has been hard, but at the end I got the
idea and I have been applying them into my Teaching Practice and they have been
very helpful, I never thought how easy a class could be when you make a lesson
plan and follow it as it has to be followed.



Rubrics
As we all know, evaluation in teaching is very common, and it is the way to
evaluate students and show them that they are capable to perform the language. It
can be of different ways, and the best way of evaluate the results of those
evaluations is through the use a rubric. A rubric is an easily applicable form of
authentic assessment. A rubric simply lists a set of criteria, which defines and
describes the important components of the work being planned or evaluated. For
example, students giving a research presentation might be graded in three areas,
content, display, and presentation. (us.iearn.org). This is a very important and
precise way to evaluate because there is no doubt about the grade and the results
are based on the four macro skills, because they are the center of teaching English.

E-PORTFOLIO APPLIED TO ELT
An e-portfolio is a very helpful tool for teachers; it consists on the collection of
information about the Teaching Practice resources. An e-portfolio can be very useful
because there, you can see how much you have improved and the activities that have done
before in some specific topics. I would use it by setting there the activities that I have done
during my Teaching Practice, I would also include the electronic resources that I have
used, like facebook, for example, there is a group on facebook that I have created in order
to post information about the course and in that way I can keep in touch with my students
during the week, because we get together only on Saturdays. Another thing I would
include is the methodology that I have been using during this process. The
implementation of e-portfolio will help me to get record of the activities that I have
developed and avoid the repetition of them.

A TECHNOLOGICAL TEACHER VRS A NON-PREPARED CLASSROOM
The use of technology into the classroom is a source that is very useful and
teachers have to take advantage of it, technology helps a lot, because through it we
can make our class more interesting and less boring, and even easier to prepare
and manage for teachers. In that way we can catch the students attention and even
engage them into the teaching process, it helps to have much better results at the
end of a course, and students enjoy technological classes because that is something
that is updated and attractive for them. But, what happens when a teacher goes to
a school where there is no technology? What happens when there are not enough
computers nor internet access for students? What happens is that teachers use to
accommodate and forget about the real mission of a teacher, they start to develop a
class with no real interest on the students learning, and there is when teaching
becomes too traditional and teachers lose their passion, because they do not have
enough resources (computers, data show, and projector) to develop a class,
therefore, they start to base on text books and photocopies, classes become
repetitive and boring. That is the reason why teachers have to be prepared not only
with knowledge; teachers have to be prepared to use even the environment in
order to make a class out the traditional context.
My Teaching Practice has been kind of difficult because of the absence of
technology into the classroom, but I know that a teacher has to be prepared with
material and ideas for the development of a different, entertainment and out of the
traditional teaching class, that is why I would be prepared with interactive and
dynamic activities that are related with the topic of the class in order to have my
students focused on the process. The use of visual aids would be very useful too,
because I can make them to describe them or guess the action that an image
represents. The use of my laptop and a pair of speakers can be very useful to help
them with their listening, by playing them some audio recordings and some songs
with which I can make a lot of activities that students can find very interesting and
funny.
The use of the resources that a teacher has, is very important, because a
teacher has to be creative and know what kind of resources he or she has in order
to plan his/her class. The use of technology into the classroom is very important,
but when there is no technology in an institution, teachers are really tested because
there is when teachers show how well-prepared they are in order to take
advantage of their creativity and the few resources they count with. That is not an
excuse to cover simple and traditional classes, teachers have to demonstrate to
themselves and their students that they are competent teachers and that they care
about the learning process that the institution has for the teaching of English
language.




CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, I can say that this Teaching Practice experience has been
very hard, stressful and frustrating, because I did not have teaching experience and
this has been how I have gotten into the world of teaching, a wonderful but
challenging world, in which I have to do more than my best, to go beyond my own
limits in order to improve. There are a lot of excuses that I can use, but none of
them is valid, because a teacher has not excuse for a simple and traditional class.
And that is the challenge that I have accepted during this course, to be a different
teacher, learn from my mistakes, because teachers are human too and we all make
mistakes, we are not perfect, therefore, I have to be pushing myself every single
day of my life since today, and make things as good as possible without forgetting
that I have to accept critics and comments that people say about me, because in
that way I can improve and become into a better teacher and a better person.
Teaching Practice have taught me a lot of things, some of them are to be
more responsible and dedicated to what I have to do and also to know what my
priorities are. Another thing I have learnt is that the more conscious a teacher is
about the things that have to improve, the better teacher I can become. This has
been a really heavy challenge, and I have faced it without technology help, it has
helped me a lot because I have training my creativity and now I can prepare
classes not only with technology, I can use interactive activities and show that the
learning process of English can be developed in a different and enjoyable way.










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