Teach English in Xiadian Zhen - Changzhi Shi

I have been teaching at an international kindergarten in China for the past two years now. The school I currently work at does not require the English teachers to have a TEFL certificate, simply a Bachelor’s degree in any field is good enough. After many trials and errors after being thrown into a classroom teaching 3-4 year olds, I found many things that came naturally to me, such as finding my own ways to build rapport with my students. After going through this course I found many ways that TEFL has helped me manage my classroom and I find it runs more smoothly now. Learning about other ways to build rapport with my students and how to manage teaching students at different English levels really helped me, and I wish I would have taken this course before I started teaching, but it is better late than never. There are some things that did come naturally to me, and I only discovered that it came effortlessly after reading about it in this course. The biggest thing that I didn’t even think about was building a rapport with my students. I constantly made a fool of myself in my lessons because the children needed entertainment, and they wouldn’t pay attention in my lessons if the lessons are not fun and a little wild. I personally love having fun in the classroom and I always thought if I was having fun and laughing at myself then the children would do the same. If my students are not giggling and enjoying themselves while learning, then I am not doing my job. I want learning to be fun for them because that’s what it should be about. My students always want to come to school now because of the rapport I have built with them, without me even knowing I was doing so until reading about it in Unit 5. Because of this I found many different options on how to build rapport that came in hand in other ways like pair work. Pair work does help build rapport but it also helps in managing a large class. I remember doing a lot of pair work in my language classes when I was in school and I don’t know why I didn’t think about it on my own. And I didn't do any sort of pair work until I took this course. As simple as it sounds, I should have known to pair stronger students with the weaker ones when doing worksheets and other activities. At first when my class completed worksheets I had the weaker students all at one table and I helped them complete the worksheet myself. Because my focus was simply on that small group I had a hard time controlling the rest of my stronger students when they finished. I should have had them do the worksheet in pairs and then the stronger students could have helped out their classmates and everyone would have finished around the same time. I do that now and it works wonderfully! I monitor the other groups of students instead of focusing on one group. Also the students are talking to each other, increasing Student Talk Time and therefore decreasing Teacher Talk Time which is a big goal in the classroom. Although there are many other aspects of this course I now use in the classroom, pair work has played a huge role in how my classroom now runs. I notice a huge difference in my students; they are talking more and feel a lot more comfortable in my class. I also feel less scattered while doing work in the class and my time management is really improving. I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to take a TEFL course because teachers are never perfect and I know we always look for ways to progress. This course is a great start at a lifetime of learning, teaching and improving