Teaching Reflection

Teaching in front of children never really has made me nervous before. I always enjoyed teaching and seeing that light bulb go off in student’s heads. It is such a rewarding feeling that no other profession can give. However, when I was teaching in the Czech schools, I was pretty nervous. It is super easy when teaching at home because students can actually understand the language you speak. The language barrier was not great but definitely noticeable in the English class. Emily and I taught about North Carolina culture. We showed them pictures of things commonly found in North Carolina with the English word below. Having the picture really helped get the point across what the word meant. Some difficulty was using transition words to talk about where we are from and about the bingo game we played. In the end they understood what were saying but it took a while. I didn’t want to make it seem like I thought they were dumb if I was speaking too slowly but I also didn’t want to talk to fast so they couldn’t understand me. Emily and I also found difficulty with this when we were planning our lesson. We didn’t know how hard or easy to make it for the students since we didn’t know their English level. In the end however, the students were able to understand the words we wanted them to know and were much more successful at bingo that I thought they would be.

Overall, teaching in a foreign school was a great experience. I do not like grammar or English that much so it pushed me to really make clear the point I was trying to make with the students. Besides the fact that the school had no air conditioning and it was one of the hottest days, the day was fantastic. Not only the teaching part but also the observation part was great. I loved sitting in the classroom and seeing the similarities and differences between American and Czech schools. It gave me a great point of comparison. It was interesting to see the many similarities that I was not expecting like the teaching style and the student’s attitudes. If I had the chance to do it again I would in a heartbeat! I’m now intrigued to see other teaching styles in many other countries.