International Teaching

I can now call myself an international student teacher! I enjoyed visiting the Czech schools a lot because it was interesting seeing the difference between classroom styles. The biggest difference between the schools was that the teacher moved classrooms instead of the students. I thought it made for a less chaotic 5 minute classroom change. The classroom dynamic itself was similar with the teacher asking the class questions and expecting a correct response. The children showed the teacher much respect by being quite when asked and remaining quite while the teacher was explaining a new lesson. Even better than observing was getting to teach. A few things learned in both my classes played a role in the lesson itself. Emily and I were able to test how much the children learned by playing bingo after going through some words related to North Carolina. While our measurement may not have been completely accurate, it did show that the kids learned some of the words. Using pictures of the words allowed the children to visually understand the meaning of the word. The picture helped since neither Emily nor myself could directly translate the English word correctly into Czech. It gave the children something to connect the word to. When we played bingo and showed the children a picture, they quickly found the word that corresponded with the picture. It shows how important a visual representation of a word actually is when teaching another language. Overall, I thought getting to experience a Czech school by observing and teaching, was a great addition to both of my classes.