Come into my World

This is already my third week of practicum and i have the impression things are developing faster than I had expected. The serious concierge of the school already greets me enthusiastically and with a smile on his face every day when I get in the school, many teachers and students say hello when we meet in the corridors and I have started to feel, somehow, integrated within the school. With the students in my groups is happening exactly the same thing and the best of all is that it is reciprocal. I can recognize the faces of most of the students in both groups and, despite being a total of 39 students all together, I have easily started to remember most of their names too. And I am glad I have, as I am participating little by little more actively in my tutor’s classes!
As I have mentioned in previous posts, the classes are divided into two groups once per week. My tutor has explained me this is compulsory when they are more than 25 students in one class and that, despite neither of them has more than 25 students, they decided at the beginning of the course to separate them anyway in order to be able to pay further attention to each particular student and their needs. This is especially required when they have to do interacting and speaking activities because, as my tutor has said to me, the new curriculum for foreign languages demands to focus more on these skills. As we had half of the students in group D2, my tutor has asked them to change the sitting arrangement in a semicircle. This is very important, she has said to me, as it provides a warmer and more appropriate environment to develop the speaking skills of the students. When she said to me this class would be about plastic surgery, the first thing I thought was this topic might be quite boring for the students. I thought that, if I had to prepare a class like this by my own at this at this stage, I would'nt know what sort of questions I would have to ask them or how I would manage to call their attention and interest throughout the whole class. Afer this class I have realized it is possible to keep the students' attention even when dealing with the most boring topics: if we are empathic with the students and try to get into the world within their heads, we could achieve it. Each student is a different and has different interests. It can be very difficult to reach and to respond to the interests of all the students, but if you make the effort of thinking as a teenager, to get into their world, you will surely have more chances to succeed. So, when we have asked the students if they would pay money to change parts of their body, their reaction has been unanimous: an emphatic "No". But when we have asked them if they wouldn´t in circumstances such as being an actor or an actress, after an accident or if they had low self-esteem, they have started to hesitate and some of their answers have changed. As it seems to be an important issue for teenagers, we have focused on self-esteem. We have related this it to their preferences of boys and girls and the models they mostly like to justify the increasing demand of plastic surgery at early ages. We have even spoken about the Spanish Health System and the operations it covers. It is always very useful to provide them with information of the world around them. And last, but not least, we have spoken about a very important issue for teenagers: the physical and phychological consequences of acne and its medical treatment. This has particularly called their attention. I was amazed to see how thet are able to construct sentences and express themselves. I did not expect they would have such a good level. To finalize the class, we have worked on a listening about plastic surgery in order to review the use of comparatives and superlatives. When my tutor has had a problem with the cd-player she has apologized and has made a laugh at herself about being so bad at technology. I have realized how important it is, despite being though and strict, to sometimes make them understand teachers are human beings too.
With group B2, as they are smaller in number, things are developing even faster than with group D2. This group has an excellent cohesion given the special expressive and social virtues of some of these students. This is very positive, though sometimes this makes it difficult to know how to make them calm down. My participation with them is becoming very peculiar: not only I am helping with their questions carrying out some grammar exercises and other writing activities, but I have started to be the official reader of the class too. This is helping them to realize how important it is the pronunciation and the intonation in a sentence, to copy themselves. Particularly for them, being so expressive. When my tutor gave back the results of the exams, and they saw they were not as good as they expected, one of the students has started to cry. She felt lost and was not able to follow the classes, she has confessed. I would have never thought I would live such an experience. It has certainly been very sad to see such an outgoing girl crying while she was justifying herself. I have somehow felt helpless... but we have considered the best we could do is meeting with her during the break time, to listen and to analyze ther thoughts and her circumstances in a deeper way with the aim to see how we could encourage her and make her continue following the rhythm of the class. This has particularly made me think that, if our objective as teachers is the learning process of the students and improving their results, we must pay special attention to all and each of these issues. If you don´t listen to them, if we don´t analyze their feelings, thoughts and beliefs, the world within their heads, we will very easily start loosing students along the way.