Well... I am a teacher...

Had I said my fourth week of practicum in IES Bernat el Ferrer had been intense? Then, let’s forget about it! The worst was still to arrive. Apart of my intense engagement in the practicum participating and teaching in my tutor’s classes, this fifth week in IES Bernat el Ferrer has also been intense emotionally, almost bordering stress. It has been, on one hand, a week of analysis, reflections and conclusions about my teaching experience, about my own strategies and procedures. It has been, on the other hand, a though week thinking about the design and performance of my lesson plan, which I will have to implement during the next two weeks with group D2.
As my tutor had suggested the previous week, I had prepared a speech for group D2 about my student and professional life with two main objectives: the first, to get more familiarized and more confident with group D2. I had actively participated with this group, but I had not been their teacher so far. The second objective was to encourage these students to work hard on the English language, whatever their vocation is, as sooner or later it would be rewarded in their lives. After an introductory warm-up in which my tutor has written a sentence on the blackboard and has made some comments reviewing the content of the previous class, I have stood in front of my 23 students in group D2 and have started speaking about my student and professional life. Once more, I have felt very confident with my explanations, this time I was not nervous at all. The tone and volume of my voice have come out loud and clear spontaneously, so has under my opinion a good sense of expressivity and gesticulation too. My background as a translator and interpreter must most have contributed to this skill of mine. All the students were paying attention to me. I have tried to focus on two main issues: about the importance of starting considering their future professional lives and about the relevance of learning English nowadays, whatever is the direction their professional lives will be taking. At the end of my speech, some students have asked me some questions both about languages and about the studies of Translation and Interpretation, what has been very rewarding to me indeed as a person and a speaker. They had not only been listening to me, but my words have had an impact on them. I hope they reflect on them and have somehow an influence in their future.
After this class, my tutor and I have met again to speak about my lesson plan. From our previous meeting I had already of couple of ideas, these were working around Jules Verne’s character Willy Fog and around an introductory power point including photographs of different countries of the world. How to continue designing activities for my lesson plan and how to perform it, this has momentarily stressed me out in this meeting: I have lost my concentration and I was not able to make any decision. Once at home, when I have tackled this issue in a more relaxing way, a series of interesting ideas have started to flow. I had probably made a mess in my mind out of nothing. This has taken me, nevertheless, a very positive outcome in the end: this is a clear idea of how I will be designing an implementing my lesson plan. I will be presenting my didactic unit in a wiki about Willy Fog, Jules Verne’s main character in Around the World in Eighty Days. In this wiki I will have to design different activities working on the five main skills involved in the language learning process, these are reading, listening, speaking, interacting and writing. Therefore, I will be able to use the introductory power point with photographs of different countries for another activity of my lesson plan: Willy Fog will have a new challenge. He will have to travel around the world in 23 days, visiting 23 different countries, and the students will have to write the story of this trip. So, if I create a power point including 23 different countries, then these could be those Willy Fog will be visiting in his future trip. Nice to see sooner or later inspiration comes.
The beginning of the week was not easy. But it has under my opinion been a hard week for everybody. In the school, most teachers were stressed too. They were all correcting exercises, preparing exams, discussing about the strike on Bologna’s Project, then the frizzing cold inside and outside the school… My tutor has not been able to escape from it either. The following day we had class with group D2 again my tutor didn’t find her textbook. She is never late, so I tried to help by going in advance and opening the classroom to the students. As she was taking longer than expected, I decided to create a proper working environment in my tutor’s absence by making them do some exercises. Short after she came to class, we were interrupted: the elections to the School Board were taking place that day and the students had to go downstairs to the main hall in order to vote. One of my students in group D2 had applied for candidate following my tutor’s advice, so this has added some excitement to the event. After this class, I was able to have a short meeting with my tutor to explain my new ideas for my lesson plan to her: after the stress of the previous day, good to hear I was finally going in the right direction! So, I started designing it at once and I have been working hard on it ever since.
The week has finished with another enriching experience. My tutor had to attend urgent matters during a class to group B2, so she has asked me if I could carry out the class on my own. No wonder it had been a strategy of her for me to teach the students on my own. Either way, I have very much appreciated this. I have been able to pay special attention to my teaching and now I am in a position to take some conclusions about the experience: on one hand, I have problems controlling the time. I never wear a watch. I have always used my mobile phone for this. Despite having the lesson well structured and prepared, the time goes by fast when the students ask more questions than you would expect or when you concentrate on addressing diversity, given the importance of making sure all the students are understanding and following your explanations. Well, it seems I will have to buy a watch and pay more attention to time! On the other hand, I have difficulties to keep three students of this class quiet and silent. I have tried several times with the usual shhh! and even calling for their respect to a proper learning environment. These are three girls sitting at the back of the class who, according to my tutor, like me. So, I will have to start thinking of strategies to keep the students in silence. I have not thought about it at that moment, but maybe I should have tried to be silent while they were speaking, to see how they would react. Ever since I entered in a class of group B2 for the first time either for observation or participation, I was always friendly to them. I might have been mistaken at not providing them with any behaviour or discipline instructions in my first class with them. But I started as a CAP student and now I am their teacher: a role confusion I wasn’t able to envisage at the very beginning. But I take note for the future.
Next week I will start implementing my lesson plan with my students in Group D2. Five very intense weeks of practicum so far, which, combined with the high number of activities we must carry out to obtain this CAP certificate, have been in fact very exhausting. But they have, undoubtedly, provided me with an extraordinary knowledge about the Educational System, the life in Secondary Schools nowadays and the teachers’ roles in the educational process, both as a teacher and as part of the institution. The implementation of my didactic unit next week will almost put an end to my practicum.

Much More Than Teaching...

Have you ever thought being a teacher is only about teaching? Then, let me say you are wrong. Among the dozens of functions the teachers are involved in (imagine… preparing the classes, thinking of activities, preparing exams, correcting exercises, being responsible of the students, correcting exams, input the marks in the system, development of projects, implementing new regulations, etc.), the most remarkable is attending to meetings: department meetings, tutor’s meetings, teachers’ meetings, assessment meetings, parents meetings, etc. As with the limited hours of this CAP we cannot attend them all, this week I have focused on a tutorship class, its corresponding tutor’s meeting and a department’s meeting.
My coach is the tutor of group 31 in 3rd of ESO in IES Bernat el Ferrer. As in all her classes, she has checked attendance and then she has informed the students about the agenda of the day: the forthcoming students’ elections to the Board of the School, as one of the students of this group has applied as a candidate following the advice of my tutor. Then, some remarks about behaviour rules to be established in the next meeting of tutors of 3rd of ESO, such as for example the number of delays which are to be considered punishable. The return of a template filled in by the students with the grades they expect in the forthcoming exams signed by their parents (self-assessment). The design of a personal study agenda, day by day, with a view to the forthcoming exams signed by their parents too. And finally, a voluntary work to be carried out in class about a conference they have just seen. Each school has normally a tutorship plan to carry out. According to what I have been able to deduct from the class I have attended, the tutorship plan to be carried out in 3rd of ESO has two main objectives: on one hand, to foster the human values of the students, their discipline and the rules who govern the school. On the other hand, to improve the academic results of the students by improving their study strategies and techniques and by involving their parents in the process. When they started the last point of the agenda, the activity on human values, my tutor has taken the chance I was in the class with the students to have individual and personalized meetings with some students outside the class. The topic, the opinion of the teachers about the student of one side and the opinion of the student about his/her needs and results on the other.
The tutor’s meeting, and the tutorship class, takes place once per week. The tutors’ meetings are organized by academic year. In the case of the meeting I have attended with my coach, all were tutors of the groups in 3rd of ESO. They have spoken about the procedures and functions they, as tutors, have to carry out, such as meeting with the parents of the students, templates to fill in, inspections, etc. They have also agreed on some rules for the students and their corresponding punishment, such as for example in the case of delays in class. They have spoken about the students’ elections to the Board of the School and the candidates, as there should be at least one from 3rd of ESO. They have mentioned my tutor’s student in group 31/D2, who has applied for candidate to the Board. They have also spoken about past and future activities, as for example, the results on the activity on human values and, then, about the activities focused on improving the learning strategies of the students. My tutor has mentioned her idea of making her students in group 31 prepare a study agency to be signed by their parents. The idea has been welcome by all the other tutors of 3rd of ESO and they have agreed they all will apply this learning strategy to their students too. Finally, they have spoken about some particular students group by group, focusing on those with particular cases such as curricular adaptations or those causing conflicts in the school. This part has been of special interest given the importance of knowing how to proceed and deal with these issues in the right way: not only with the aim of neutralizing the student’s conflicts, but in order not to get involved into any legal issue too. A tutor’s meeting is, therefore, the cradle of all the different functions of the teachers as tutors, for the tutorship class and for the daily everyday life within the school.
The cradle of the teacher’s didactic function is the Department Meeting, in this case the Foreign Languages Department. In these meetings, which take place very one or two weeks according to the agenda, the teachers deal with all the issues concerning common teaching procedures and strategies such as compulsory readings, the division of the students in groups to foster particular skills such as speaking and interaction, changes in the curricular units at a school or a greater level such as the increase of the mark percentage of the speaking skills in the pre-university exam, etc. Then, about the exams and the different resources to be used in them as, though each teacher prepares his/her own exams, resources such as listening or reading cannot be repeated for the same group in the following years… They have also spoken about language projects that can be carried out in the school, with a special mention to the Comenius Project they are already involved in. About new regulations taking effect in short and the requirements for adaptation to these new regulations, etc and about bureaucracy: about how many documents, papers, regulations, projects, etc they must get involved in.
These two meeting and the tutorship class have been very useful to me to widen my knowledge about the school and the different functions the teachers are involved in. As far as this kind of meetings is concerned, and given I am already running out of hours to carry out this practicum, I will only be able to attend one more, this will be the Assessment Meeting in a couple of weeks, once I have finished implementing my didactic unit and the exams week of the first term is over.