Teacher’s Eyes, “Eagle Eyes” ( first three weeks reflection)

Time always runs faster than you expect, half of our teaching practice has finished.. Have a look at the first three weeks. For me, it is like zooming into all the things I worried before. After these few days, I start to understand that a good teacher is the one who can see potential among students.

Form 2:

From the first day I stepped into form 2 AMANAH class, I’ve already known that their English proficiency is not that good. Most of boys cannot speak English very well and they don’t even want to pay efforts on speaking. One of the students shrug his shoulders and told me “teacher, i speak broken English, I don’t want to speak English in the class”. I was a little bit speechless but I can feel that the student is just lazy to reply me. I just replied: “it’s alright, teacher is also speaking the broken English, but I am just trying to be good. Nobody is perfect, who cares, just enjoy ourselves.” I was trying to narrow the distance between me and him and encourage him to speak. however, they just reply without passion. i think What I should improve later is to create a more comfortable and interesting environment for them to speak. (Situation 1: Students have no efforts on speaking English in class)

The first week, I ask them to write an essay to describe their hobby. I think it is quite a simple essay and provided all the guidelines for writing this essay. However, the following problems continuously come out. First of all, I never know that collecting homework is such a big work, I cannot get all their work, I reminded them two times and finally I have few of their work. I went to class again. I called the students who have not submitted the essay stand up and asked them come to me after class. After class, I first asked their opinions how to deal with their late submitting and one of the boys just simply replied me “alright, teacher, just write my name to the discipline teacher.” I was quite shocked because he shows me that he does not even care about anything and going to discipline teacher’s office is just his routine. (Situation 2: Student ignores school’s authority). When he mentions discipline teacher, I just directly tell him that “I won’t bother Puan Ong (discipline teacher), it doesn’t work at all, this is not an assignment any more, this is telling you how to keep one’s words” Later on, I give extra work for punishment. I am not sure whether it works or not. Frankly, they behave better in the next assignment, but there always has someone different from the main group.      

In the class, some of the boys really cannot concentrate, maybe their spoken English is not that good, and therefore, most of the boys always speak Malay to each other. Even sometimes I just stand in front of them and ask them to repeat my words, they still cannot do it. Every time I just ask the one who cannot answer my questions stand up and sit until they can answer the question. (Situation 3: no concentration). It can work for a while Anyway, everything will not always go the same way. One time, in literature class, I played the video “lemon tree” with cartoon for learning the poem “I wonder”. They were quite interested and excited. Although the sound of speaker is low and they cannot hear clearly, they sing with the songs and attempt to answer the questions. In post lesson, I ask them to draw picture to interpret the poem line by line and they did it very well. Actually, I didn’t expect that they can draw a full picture because they are normally passive in the classroom. As we can see, students have different sides and no matter they are introverts or extroverts, they all have potential. Teacher should have the ability to read their behavior and develop their potential.

Form 4:

My form 4 class is not the best class, but in my opinion, this is the class with the most potential. On the first day I went into the classroom, I can see that they are much more cooperative than form 2 class. Although some of the boys are too relaxed and sometimes it brings me headache, generally they are cute and creative.

In the second week, we have topic about “craft”. We discussed a lot about Malaysian and Chinese traditional craft and I ask them to make a craft in the post-lesson. I didn’t ask them to draw anything; instead, I just give them the mahjong paper and tell them to make anything they want as long as the craft can stand. In small group discussion, everyone are highly participated, let’s have a look at their work. J

As you can see, they make the Malaysian rockets, basket, and platform. ….

Actually, they are active not only in the classroom, but also on the stage. On 22th September night, our school has a students’ concert “SMASH”. We joined them that night and I was quite amazed by them because everybody looks different on that night. There are two main performers come from my class and in the following week, they all get the prize. So great! From this concert I also know that they have lots of passion in music. In the following revision week, I will raise some topic which is related to music and most of them all like it. I wish I can discover more from them later.

Best Regards,

ZHAO XUNYU