The Magic of Teaching

  I have already finished my practicum, and I have no words to explain how joyful it was. At the beginning, I felt it was something very difficult to achieve, however, then I realize when you love what you do, nothing is impossible! Passion and dedication are essential keys. Little by little I started knowing my students, some of them very quiet while others were totally the oppositive (Talkative, and full of energy.). However, that´s perfectly right, they are just teenagers and each student brings something special to our classrooms. To know different students and their amazing personalities was great! It is amazing to be the person that reinforce their knowledge. Teaching is a career in which we have to have love, patient, be kindness, and empathy to connect with our students. It is essential to take the time to understand them in order to help them not only in their knowledge, but also to be the better version of themselves. During my practicum period, we studied units abo...

  While we had a dept semester, achieving different responsibilities such as cursing different courses, attending our practicum in different high schools in Puntarenas, creating planning and activities, we received a good new. The coordination of our major along our professor provided us an incredible opportunity: The chance to obtain a English Language certification in the INA (Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje). As most of us know, having a certification on a second language is really important in order to demonstrate what we are capable of. This certification becomes an essential asset in showcasing our proficiency, especially as future English teachers.   When our professor told us we were to have the opportunity to course this certification progress, involving different evaluations, we were super exited! By two weeks, we had appointments on the place. We completed different listen and speaking test, which are done in order to evaluate the level of each student. Gratef...

  An opinion on the royals: The Royalty is an amazing chapter of the book The Ten Students You'll Meet in your Classrom by Vickie Gill.  This chapter emphasizes on those students that have some “privilege” for different reasons such as, their families, their appearance or because being part of a sport team.  These privileges can sometimes create unintentional divisions within the student body.  As teachers, it is important and fundamental to avoid fall on appearances or status. We must remember that each student is an individual. It is essential to create environments that encourages personal growth where all the students feel equally, also, remember that we are working with teenagers. Creating a classroom where all students feel safe and equally valued, we impulse them to live their life, enjoy their individuality, and to learn about their own mistakes. This approach will help students to become more empathetic and responsible citizens in the future. Also, t...

  As my development as a teacher, I saw an amazing video called “Una Mancha de Grasa” that was presented in one of my classes. This clip made me feel different emotions such as angry, sadness, hope, and happiness. I was facing a roller coaster of feelings, which is great. Basically, in the video we appreciated how a little kid faces with a very hard life, and his teacher was also hard to him because she didn’t know him. Little by little, the teacher, with the help of father of the church, took the time to know the environment of the neighbor she was teaching. This, bring to the teacher to analyzed her behavior and to empathizes with children. I consider this is a video every teacher must watch a least once in their career. Sometimes, people say that work with children and teenagers is difficult, however, we don’t know the reality in which each student lives. For me, a teacher must not be a figure of authoritarianism who simply imposes rules and knowledge, on the contrary, a teacher...