AUTOBIOGRAPHY

     I started my career as a teacher some years ago when I started teaching children in particular classes. Some day a friend told me about a child who needed reinforcement in the area of English. I had never taught or explained a child something until that day, and I realized that I needed more preparation. Then, some other mothers called me to reinforce their sons and I started teaching different students, of different ages and with different learning styles. From that moment, I started reflecting on my own personal and professional growth and asking myself, how could I be a better teacher?
     After some months teaching personalized classes, someone told me about a vacant for an English teacher in a school in the center of the city. That day I was excited. The coordinator told me that I had to approve a "classroom test". I remember that I felt really nervous because that was going to be my first class with a big group. There were about fifteen students between fifteen and twenty years old. When I got in the classroom I started sweating and sometimes I stuttered. I introduced myself and applied with them a diagnosis English exam.
     Fortunately, students were kind and very good at English, however, there was one student on his phone all the time. I felt annoyed because he didn't pay attention and I had told him many times to take away his cellphone but he didn't attend. I got mad and asked him to give me his cellphone but he stood up and told me that he was not going to give me anything. He was big and I got frustrated. I decided to ignore him after that and continued with my class. In the end, I told the principal what had happened and the student had to apologize. I didn't feel better after that but I was unexpert at that time.
     Moreover, I think that the diagnostic test was not a good idea for the first English class. It could have been boring for students and that may be the reason why they used the cellphone all the time. I should have done a dynamic and funny class that day as it was my opportunity to give students a good impression of the English class. Maybe, playing a game or doing some funny warming up activity.
     I have been working in the same school for one year and a half. I can say that I have had a great professional and personal growth there. I have worked with different groups and grades and I feel that I have learned a lot from everyone. In fact, I like that students tend to be very honest with me and tell me every time they do not like my class or there is a boring activity. In that school, I feel the freedom of teaching with autonomy, they do not impose a teaching style and I really value that because I have built my own technique and I work on improving it every day.
   

METAPHOR

Like the bicycle, the teaching process is like a vehicle that carries the knowledge from one place to another. A bicycle needs someone who drives and carries that knowledge and that person is the teacher. Of course, the teacher should be a prepared person, because at the beginning of the road it is easy to fall down and dispair, but depends on their perseverance and constancy the real success of the teaching process. There could be ups and downs along the teaching road, and some days could be grey, but some others are good and unforgettable.

JOURNAL 8

    This week has been very hard because I have the flu. It is very difficult to control students when you don’t feel good, nevertheless, you have to carry out the class. In fact, students are very noisy and classroom management becomes a real challenge. Besides, they do not follow instructions and do not like to work. Students from 504 are very noisy too but at least they like to participate and try to do the exercises by themselves.

     There are two weeks left of class in the school and at this point, I start reflecting on my work as a teacher and what have students learned from me at this time. I feel that I have got to know some of my students deeply. They have been nice to me and I have tried to understand them without forgetting my role as a teacher, of course.

     This week something interesting happened to me. I was walking my dog in a street near my house when I heard another dog barking inside a spout. I didn’t know how to help him when I saw a student of mine walking with other children. All of them worked together to help the dog and finally, they got it. I was very proud of my student who was directing the others. Finally, I thanked him and he seemed very proud of himself. Later, I started thinking about what teachers should teach to children beyond English or Math. I think that the simple fact of helping somebody who is in trouble is a sign of personal growth and humanity and if we as teachers thought that kind of things, children might grow with a different mind.

JOURNAL 7

    This week I carried out the last part of the lesson plan number nine in which students made a revision of the last topic seen before vacation “directions”. This week I was supposed to start with lesson number eleven but unfortunately, students had many activities before vacation so we missed some classes. In this lesson, we played a simple game before starting the class. Then, we revised the vocabulary to give directions for students to remember previous knowledge. I was surprised that they were really quiet and concentrated in their worksheets. Most of them finished very quickly.

     I think that they really liked the worksheet because it was about paintings and they had to follow my instructions marking a line in the map to see if they identified the vocabulary learned. I am satisfied that most of them remembered it.

     The innovation plan is going very well, students have shown good results. The problem is that I have not had enough time to work in the document. On the other hand, students have improved their behavior and I have learned to identify their likes and dislikes.

JOURNAL 6

     This week I was really relaxed because we didn’t have class on Monday neither on Tuesday. I saw the students just one hour on Wednesday and the class was good. I called them to revise the homework while they were working on a worksheet individually. Some of them were quiet but others were really noisy as usual.

    I have been training some students for the Spelling Bee contest that is going to be next week. The ones that I selected are very good at spelling and they are very excited about it. The rest of the permanency hours I have been working with the cooperation teacher on the preparation of the contest. It has been very difficult as the only two projectors that were in the whole school are damaged. We had to do some posters and I am working to find another projector to take it to the school on the day of the event.

    On the other side, I have been working on my innovation project and I have found that it has actually worked so far. I hope students continue improving in all aspects after holydays.

JOURNAL 5

     The class was expected to be very active as the topic was the one that we had seen last week. Children seemed very interested in that. This time I wanted them to tell me about their favorite places in the city and then we would ask and answer questions about how to get somewhere in the city. I showed them the same map that we used last class and I gave them a review of the topic giving some examples. Both courses participated actively and they really cared about this exercise.
     I think that this class was really meaningful for my students as I gave real situations and examples which made them be more focused and some of them, excited with the idea of visiting the United States. They really learned the commands to give directions as at the end of the class most of them showed good results in the exercises that they did. I would not do anything different.
    Different from the last classes, I can say that this week students were well behaved and that makes me glad. I started loving some of my students as they have shown that they love my class. It was also my cooperation teacher’s birthday and the other teachers brought a cake to celebrate. That spreading was great because I interacted with teachers from other areas and they told me some tips to keep children quiet. That’s good to be able to learn from them.

JOURNAL 4

     I felt really good at implementing the lesson plan this week. Students from both grades (604 and 605) made some gift cards for Mom’s day, they decorated them and wrote beautiful and creative messages for their moms. Students from 604 were rarely well behaved and concentrated. Besides, most of them were excited about the reaction that their mother will have when they received the cards. In the end, most of the students had finished their work and they went home happily. Next day, they told me that their mom was glad and excited because of the surprise.         
     Unfortunately, students from 605 were not the same. Despite the fact that I did the same activity and we were in a comfortable classroom with air conditioning, students did not stop talking and some of them started running around the classroom damaging their classmates’ work. Others didn’t have the cardboard, scissors or markers that they had brought because another classmate had stolen them. I got mad and took them back to their usual classroom and there, they worked kind of well. They are very rude and most of them do not care about anything. These students are repeating the course for the second or third time, so they are older than other students from 6^th grade.
     After this lesson, I found out that some students need someone who talks to them in a sweet way, with love, while others need someone strict and firm who reminds them of the rules. Students from 605 definitively work better when I turn to a rigorous teacher, however, I feel that I can’t take this attitude every day.