A Beautiful Experience Teaching to Teenagers

First, I want to thank to God for this wonderful experience, my mentor teacher Lily Tobar for giving me the opportunity to be with her and for supporting me, Ss for participating in all the activities, Teacher Yanira for helping me to grow as a T. Here I share my beautiful experience teaching to teenagers.

The big challenge started on Saturday 3th, September. I spend 8 weeks with Ss. In the first day, I was nervous how my mentor teacher and my students could be. My tutor was Lily Tobar. When I saw her, my first impression was that she was serious and strict with Ss. On the contrary, she is creative, friendly, sweet and patient. Ss were talkative, noise, and friendly. We started in the module 9 and we had 20 Ss. This module was about reading when I heard that came to my mind it would be boring. Also, I thought it would be boring for Ss too because many of them do not like to read despite of that they showed interesting in reading. A month later, we were in module 10, we had 18 Ss. I believed, I would work with others Ss but the surprise was I worked with the same group of Ss and we continued with the same skill.

 Module 9 

For this course, I had many expectations to teach teenagers because I have experience to teach children but this experience was very different. According with the information about teenagers, they are rebels and also some of them look like children, they act immature. All the information that I read before match up with the teenager’s behavior. I could observe the three teenager’s development. For instance, they analyze the situation and they start to take matures decisions. In addition, they have the ability to communicate and make new friends.

I had the opportunity to be in front of Ss five times and I taught them two hours. Before the class, T Lily supported me in how could manage to Ss. Somethings that I like was how they reacted with the activities that I prepared for them. They liked to participate in all of them but sometimes they were talkative and distracted. The firs class was observation. T lily developed all the class, I observed that she did in a creative way, I took into account all the things for example: time management, the materials and the activities. The first time that I taught them, I was nervous but at the same time, I felt confident because as always I prepared my lesson with all activities and the material that I used.  Moreover, they payed attention to all the instructions that I gave them. They showed interesting in the new topic. Something that call my attention was the way that they always worked in groups with the same people for example, girls and boys; I decided to make different groups mixing both of them even though they did not like to work with different people. As a result, it was a good idea they made a good job. In the others classes, I felt better because I knew them. Those practicums were easy for me the way that I taught them. I noticed that they loved competition and they always worked well. In addition, they liked to practice speaking and writing skill. In one case, they created a perfume they were enthusiastic drawing it. They surprised me with the facility to draw and described it. I was happy because T Lily retook the activity for the oral evaluation. I could see at the end of each classes how tired they were, maybe that was the reason why they were distracted.

 They are good in different skills. I could see how fast they learn. At the end of each class, I felt satisfied with all the things that I did because students achieved the objective in each lesson.

Since first day, I felt accepted by my mentor T and Ss. I felt part of the group as if I had been since the first day of class with them. She was a good model for me because she is patient. When Ss did not understand something, she explained again with details or real example T Lily encouraged them to participate in all the activities and she always had a reward for them. In the first classes, I did not do it but I learned it from her. T developed the classes in an interesting way. When I was in front of Ss, she always observed the activities that I did and at the end of each class, she gave me feedback and advice. She said me “congratulation, you are creative in all the activities, I liked it” and I can say the same for her all the activities that she prepared, Ss enjoyed it. She was comprehensible; she gave me the time that I considered necessary for all the activities.

Module 10

Everything in life is good; the positive aspects help to motivate and the negative aspects help to improve. In this experience, the positive aspects were the opportunity to work with teenagers they helped us to continue growing up as a teacher, they learned from us and we learned from them. Also, we had the opportunity to observe how the mentor teachers developed the class with teenagers. Moreover, We have to prepared lessons and materials according with the level of students and the skill. I just find a negative aspect I could have the opportunity to work with other skill just with reading. However, I enjoyed and acquired knowledge. I will take into account all the suggestions that my mentor T did me for the next practicum “Teaching to Adult”. I feel proud as the result of this experience.

Thank You