This week I taught my first class. For the next ten weeks, I will be co-teaching an online mixed level reading lab. The students in this class come from various cultural backgrounds and have speaking abilities ranging from level one to level three. The focus of this week’s class was to get to know the students and access their speaking abilities. I was pleasantly surprised by how excited the students were to meet us. Many of them expressed that they are combating loneliness and are struggling with the current reality of the pandemic. I hope that for the next ten weeks that this class can help alleviate some of the loneliness they are experiencing, in addition to improving their speaking abilities.
Overall, I thought that this class was a success. All the students participated in the activities and did so using English. At the beginning of the lesson I was quite nervous and upon reflection I realized that I was speaking too fast. As the lesson progressed, I became more comfortable and my speaking became slower. However, I think that even my slower pace was too fast for some of the students. Thus, over the next ten weeks I would like to work on my pace and tone of voice. I would also like to become more comfortable providing corrections. Providing correction wasn’t the goal of this lesson, but in the coming weeks this is something that I will need to do to help students progress.
On a personal note, after the lesson was done, I couldn’t stop smiling. I am excited to see myself grow and become a better teacher over the course of this practicum. This experience reaffirmed that teaching is a career that I will be passionate about for the rest of my professional life.