Introduction
When I discovered that I was about to teach and gain experience in teaching, I of course was delighted because I immediately knew at that point how it could benefit me and my career in the future. I was expecting that I would really love teaching 7th graders and true enough; I fell in love with teaching.
Significant Experiences in Teaching
Some of the most interesting experiences I encountered during my entire 2 months length of teaching include a remarkable teacher-to-student interaction. I can never explain how much teaching gratified me as a person. I came to think that teaching may have been one of my biggest aspirations and that I have only realized it recently. Well, it’s still a good thing that I am enjoying what I am doing now, plus the students (based on their feedback) are also enjoying the teaching strategy that I implemented.
If there are interesting and good experiences, of course, there were also troublesome ones but I cannot really say that I hated those moments because they are all part of learning after all. The toughest part was during my first week of teaching. I knew that I have to make a lot of adjustments because I am not to talk to 7th grade students the way I talk to others.
Another reason that made this a lovable experience for me is the way I see how students are eager to learn. Nothing else could be compared to the feeling of teaching students when they hunger for learning. With the precise time I spent in teaching 7th Grade students at Sartell Middle School, I can expressively say that middle school is the area where I want to teach.
Being a Diverse Learner and its benefits
Throughout the numerous lectures that I have attended, there are ones where I could consider myself good at and there are also ones that are otherwise. Nevertheless, I have attributed that with my students’ diverse type of learning. Usually, normal learners would only fall within the visual and auditory learner groups.
However, I couldn’t really classify what type of aids and reinforcements to use to my students because some of them have learns faster through visual aids and some do learn fast just by listening. Because of that, I have decided to include both auditory and visual learning strategies to avoid bias and to ensure that everyone learns. Besides, it is one of the responsibilities of en educator to ensure that all students inside the room are learning and not just wasting their time and effort going to school.
Instructional and Planning Strategies
The bulk of my learning are mostly about instructional strategies and how to make people understand what I am saying. At this point, I have learned how highly-valued effective and efficient communication is and how crucial it is that other people get to understand what I am saying and at the same time, get to follow the things that I instruct them to do. I have learned that my thoughts have to be organized as much as possible so that my would-be “audiences” could interpret anything that I would say easily.
However, the principle that I decided to value the most about instructional strategies is the process of analyzing how the audience reacts to my every words or instructions. Now, I have also learned that for my current strategies or even knowledge to improve, I have to do some planning for those. Because if not, I will just remain in the same state and I won’t really move forward. All in all, I could say that I am enjoying my stay and every bit of experience that I currently encounter and will encounter.
In terms of professional growth, I could say that I have definitely grown and teaching for my short teaching experience helped me a lot in achieving that. There were a lot of things that I realized—things that you cannot see when you are sitting on your desk as a student and listening to the instructor’s instructions. Now I get to feel what it feels to stand in front of the whole classroom. Finally, I would be glad to inform everyone, including my family, that enjoy what I am doing and I am craving for more learning about the field I am currently in.
Conclusion
I consider the whole experience, being able to have the chance to teach 7th graders in an American History subject, an unforgettable one although I know I will be able to encounter more experiences of the same kind in the future. A famous quotation even states that if you lover what you are doing, you wouldn’t mind doing that particular work even in your lifetime. Teaching and educating minds is a fun thing to do and I also consider it as an accomplishment (being able to train the minds of the next generation). Throughout that whole experienced, I have discovered how tiring teaching could be. In spite of that, I still consider teaching as my lifetime profession because I always find enjoyment whenever someone gets enlightened about something they don’t know before. I love to see the way how the students react and behave whenever they learn something new and I look at it as a reward for all the challenges I’ve been through.
