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I have chosen to write about my personal teaching experience, as I believe that in one way or another it covers many of the topics listed for the final exam. I am new to teaching and going into the process I felt so overwhelmed, there were so many things to bear in mind and so many questions. Would I develop the ‘right’ syllabus; would my lesson plan be detailed enough; would I have a chance to refer to my plan throughout the lesson without shifting my attention away from the children too much; would I be underprepared for my first lesson as I don’t know exactly what my childrens’ levels would be and how much they already know… Leading to my first week of teaching YL I spent many hours a day reading about lesson planning, watching sample lessons on youtube , searching resources to be used for my lessons (worksheets, for ex.). For my first week of teaching young learners (4y.old-9y.old) I had prepared several activities for each of my classes ranging from very simple (counting, coloring animals, putting numbers in order, matching activities, animal/counting/color songs ,etc for the very young children) to more advanced activities (hangman , story books, fun posters to allow everyone to share about favorite food/activity/color, etc. for the older students). I felt so overwhelmed during the first day of teaching, I wanted to quit during all of my classes. Looking back now, I think I had over-prepared (if that is even possible) and in my desire to be the best teacher for the little kids, I overwhelmed myself with an abundance of information available online. The first day of teaching was made even more stressful by the lack of organization on my agency’s part. Classrooms were set up a few minutes before the children arrived, we had to switch classrooms and carry our own supplies each time , there was no down time to review the expectations for the upcoming lessons, as we started a lesson a few minutes after the previous class had left. I teach in France and thinking back about the unit on cultural differences , I believe that being in a new country and not being aware of the expectations made things even harder for me. For example, I was not sure if I was allowed to be firm with the children or if I could talk to the parents if children were misbehaving. Children were acting silly, they were wrestling in class, lifting weights (one of the classrooms is set up in a gym) ,they were running around and not following directions, parents were coming late in the classroom dropping off their children, it was a complete chaos. I think in the last few weeks I have found a few things that work for me and have helped me feel more confident about the teaching process- prepare my lessons, but don’t over-think the process, be firm with the students and establish expectations early on, and last but not least-openly share my frustrations with my supervisor about the poor organization at my work place and how that affects teaching.
