About me!
|
Four years back, I decided to devote my life to one of the most significant fields of inquiry in our society: education, the most rewarding profession in my opinion, but also the one which demands more responsibility and time. Excellent teaching needs a passion for teaching that requires dedication of considerable time, energy and spirit, and I felt I had all these ingredients, so, why not start working hard to become an excellent teacher?
Hello everyone. I am Anaïs García, and I am in my last year of the Primary Education Degree. Through my life, (despite the fact I am just twenty) I have experienced a wide range of situations which have changed me not only personally, but also professionally. Among my most highlighted experiences, I would choose my Erasmus in Belfast. When I was first given a scholarship, a pile of feelings went into my brain. I had never been such a long time without my family (actually I still live with my parents), which meant that I had to learn to live by myself in a country which was not mine Now, and after having spent six months in Belfast, I can definitely say that I am not afraid of that anymore: I have learnt to be autonomous, I have learnt self-regulation, and most important, I have learnt about myself: personality, weaknesses, strengths, emotions, interests… You grow up, and you mature. Apart from this experience, I am currently working at a Language School. Needless to say, working with children has always been my passion. However, not everything is as perfect as you may imagine. When you are in a class in front of twenty-five students, you may encounter different situations you will have to deal with: “what if two children start fighting?”, “what if one student says he/she is being abused”? I will never forget when I first arrived at a class, and a ten-year-old girl told me that her mum had died two days ago. “What should I do?”. As a suggestion, I would first say: treat the fact as something natural. Listen to the student, make her/him feel comfortable, open your arms to communication… whatever, but be there. Even though every single kid is different, it is essential for the student to feel that you are helpful to him/her. With regards to my features as a future teacher, I would highlight passionate and with high expectations of my students. In my humble opinion, setting high expectations for them is entirely related to its achievement (Pygmalion effect). The more you trust on them, the more you expect from them, the better result. (Meirieu, P. 1998) Moreover, I would also say that I am also a good observant, which I believe is extremely useful for being a good teacher. In fact, I believe that if you are not a good observant, you can’t know when the lesson is not working and thus, can’t improve your teaching. And I am not saying that just because, but because I had a teacher who made me aware of that. When I was younger (fifth grade of Primary Education), I was not the best student in my class, but I was not bad either. The thing is that there was a point in which I stopped doing homework at home etc. as I thought the teacher would never asked me. I felt generally unperceived. However, one day things changed: when the class was about to finish, the teacher called my name and made me go at the front of the class. I would never forget his words. “Students, you know Anaïs. Anaïs, I am a teacher and I know everything about you. I am observing you. And I will tell you a thing: I trust on your potential, and you can do much more than you do”. These words made me thought “do teachers know everything? Why did he pick me and not others?”. When time went by, I understood everything: teachers need to know everything about their class, they need to know that every student is different, that every student learns in a different way, that we trust on our students and that we set high and different expectations for them. Thank you for changing my mind. Now, I find myself in my last year of the degree, taking one of my last internships. Will I succeed? Let's discover it! |