My first journal entry

A lesson for life

I will never forget the time I had to deliver my first lesson during my practicum at the Teaching English as a Foreign Language College (TEFL). It was an evening on May the second in 2009. I had to teach a group of eight adult students who attended lessons during the evening in order to finish primary school. I had been observing those students for more than two weeks. But, that evening, there was another student who had been absent during my observations. Some minutes before entering the classroom, the school´s headmaster asked me to go to her office and told me about that student´s situation. Mercedes had terrible problems with pronunciation since she was a child. She was undergoing medical treatment and this did not allowed her to take part in lessons, especially in the English ones.
That evening I had to start with a new topic (numbers from one to ten). For that reason, I had prepared colourful flashcards of those numbers which had the same number of balls at the bottom for those students who could not recognize written numbers. After introducing the topic, I made the students repeat all the numbers chorally as many times as possible using different techniques. And later, I made them repeat the same numbers, but individually. All the students (including Mercedes) could recognize and say the numbers with little difficulties.
However, when the oral practice session came, the problem seemed to have started. I could clearly see how nervous and tensioned Mercedes was. She might be very frightened and was continuously moving and touching her hands on her desk and my intention, of course, was not making her feel like that way. Although in the lesson plan I had designed there was an individual activity, I decided to change it for a pair one. So, I told them to work in groups. Immediately after saying that, Mercedes decided to go with one of her schoolmates and since then she seemed to feel better.
The activity proposed was a bingo to play in pairs. I delivered the groups two cards each to play the game. We played it some minutes before the lesson finished. During the activity, I saw the students really excited and engaged in the task. What is more, I could observe how Mercedes enjoyed and felt freer to participate in it too. When the lesson had almost finished, I greeted all my students and left the classroom.
Outside the classroom, there was the school´s headmaster with my trainee teacher waiting for me. I thought they were very upset because I had not followed my lesson plan. They just wanted to thank me for making Mercedes (as well as the other students) feel “part” of that lesson. For me, that lesson was a lesson for life.