Life of a Teacher Reflection with Charity

As educators, we are constantly faced with challenges and triumphs in the classroom that shape not only our students' lives but our own as well. The journey of a teacher is often filled with moments of inspiration, growth, and reflection. In this blog, we aim to share these teaching reflections with charity in mind.

Completing my three days of life a teacher program was both positive and negative. This experience made realize that prioritizing my commitments, having my throughout the day schedule written in my diary and keeping a strict timetable is important. The day before any of the life of a teacher program, I had to set specific goals and throughout schedule. This program also made me realize that you need to have your colleague or peers support to help with any burden that you may encounter.

Comparing both block 1 to block 2’s experiences made me realize that as a teacher you need to have a relationship with your learners. In Block 1, I had difficulties connecting or trying to manage my classroom as those weeks we were only observing and assisting here and there. The learners were not really receiving my energy when I had to after school extra class with them, I didn’t know how to assist them individually so they can understand their work. In block 2 however was a different story, I did my life of a teacher 2 weeks in teaching experience, by then I had already established my relationship with the learners. By this time, I had already established an effective classroom management strategy that works for me. I had significant roles of setting assessments, marking test, giving out marks for presentations and recording learners’ marks. This experience made me grow as a teacher professionally and understand what a day of my life in the future will look like.  

The negative side of life a teacher I had experience, is having to create a lesson on the spot should learners finish their work of the planned lesson early. I had to do this so that learners don’t cause a disturbs in class, so I had to do something that can entertain and get them to engage. Another thing that was difficult was trying to engage every diverse learner, this was difficult for me because I use discussion as one of my go to strategy, so including shy learners was a bit challenging. At the end I came back with a strategy of asking learners to stand up in my lesson and you can only sit after providing an answer. I asked my mentor teacher first if it’s appropriate and she agreed.

Reflecting on self-evaluation, I would say that life of a teacher has prepared me to enter the profession life of a teacher. While I still recognize that I have some parts I need to develop or strengthen, I do believe I am ready for this profession. The positive feedback I got from my mentor teacher and her colleagues encourage me to believe in my skills and confidence.