Practice Teaching: Not a closure, but a beginning

I was in Kindergarten when I first dreamed of becoming a teacher. No matter what my parents would tell me that being a teacher is a tiresome job, and that nobody ever got rich because of it, this dream never faded. I was not moved by their persuasive speeches during family meetings after dinner. I really wanted to become a teacher – I want to mold lives of young children, and I want to touch the future. And so that’s it. I took up education, and I’m very happy about it.

Now I’m on my last semester as an education student. This means that I have to undergo Practice Teaching. This is finally it! I’m fifty percent excited, fifty percent nervous. Excited because finally, I will not just teach in front of my classmates pretending to be the target learners of my lesson, but I will be standing in front of high school students, hungry for knowledge and eager to learn. I’m excited to fill their cups with knowledge, and learn from them as well. However, I am also nervous because I’m afraid my students will bully me, or talk behind my back because of my skin complexion and gender preference. Furthermore, I also experienced a lot of teaching-demo bloopers for the past years of my educ-student life. One of them was when I taught Lit1 to Computer Science students for our Teaching of Literature class. I am oblivious of the fact that my zippers were open, and a student of mine told me about it. Some of the students giggled, and I turned red. It was a very embarrassing experience, that when every time I do demo-teachings, I’m afraid the same experience will happen again. Not about my zipper being opened again, but the giggling of my students. What if I’ll mispronounce a word and laugh at me again?

Despite the negative moments I had when it comes to teaching, I still look forward that my practice teaching will be as awesome, satisfying, and life-changing like what my friendly Ates and Kuyas told me. I look at practice teaching positively that it will not be the end of my journey as an education student, but an avenue to start something new. In other words, I view practice teaching as an opportunity to apply what I’ve learned in the classroom, from the mistakes that I’ve done, and from what I’ve learned from the experiences that experience itself taught me.