I can now say I am an English Teacher

So since I have learned the art of procrastination here is Prague, I will now be reflecting on the past 5 weeks I have spent here in Europe. It seems like yesterday, our educational psych class was informed Tuesday at 4:00pm that we would be teaching the next morning in a town outside of Prague and that we would have to leave the Pension at 6:15am. Lexis and I had no idea what we were going to teach and when we were going to plan for it since we only had about an hour and half to make a lesson plan. We decide to make a PowerPoint of pictures that correlate with our "MadLib" called A Day at the Doctor. Since we did not know anything about the level of English our 6th had, I was very nervous that our lesson was going to be too easy for them. Lexis was reassuring that we would be fine and that they would enjoy our lesson. So the morning of teaching, we head off to Ondre’s hometown. We arrive at the school and it was nothing what I was expecting. The school was truly amazing. We got a guided tour by the principal, the school was huge with classrooms for every different type of science, a home ec room, music room, two gyms (one with this awesome climbing wall) and the coolest of all a skate ramp. You could clearly tell that the administrators, teachers and students were very proud of their school. We then got to observe an English class and I was amazed by the students and truly enjoyed observing the classroom. After watching the first group from our class teach, I made some much-needed changes to our PowerPoint. It started as just a list of pictures and words, but we then decided to have the picture on the screen and to let all the students tell us what each picture was in English, instead of just giving them the word. I realize now that after every one they got right, I gave a verbal praise. I was even more excited when the students got some of the words correct (or as close as their accent would allow) that I didn’t think they would get like clown and broccoli. I realize now that some praise is acceptable, but I definitely overused praise, which Alfie would say is unacceptable and the incorrect way to teach. After we went through all the words with our students, they got to work on their MadLibs. Many of them did not understand that they could put funny words into the story instead of the correct words. After much reinforcement that they were doing the puzzle correct, we discovered that our lesson was at an appropriate level for our students. We had two students read their stories after they had finished and I was amazed at their level of English. I know our story was in basic English, but neither of the girls struggled with any words on the page. I have to say that teaching English at the school was one of the best learning experiences I have had here in Prague.