My Teaching At The Bonita Literacy Center

I have had many “teacher like” experiences in my life, but teaching at the Bonita Literacy Center was the first time where the students relied solely on my teaching, my preparation, and my strategies to be able to learn a language important to their everyday lives. For me personally, this my time to shine and be able to really see if I really have what it takes to be an effective. In the beginning, when we were told we were teaching I as nervous, but excited. As we got closer to our time to teach, I realized I had nothing to worry about because I had the passion from the start and this class gave me the strategies I needed to get the job done. Something I did learn, that was very important was that I am what some would call an “outgoing”
One of the biggest problems we have with students is trying to getting them step out of their comfort zones. During my third teaching experience, I had start her first day of English lesson in my class. She was the only girl and was really hesitant. She was an older learner and it was obvious that she rather listen because she was scared to embarrass herself. When Judy introduced herself to her, she made it clear that she wanted to only listen and not participate. For this class, I created a game that would get the students up and laughing. They were jumping at the opportunity to participate, even our new girl! We asked her to play, and she was eager to jump in. It showed me that all that effort I put in to adapt to my students pays off in the end. Your students should have to adapt to you; you adapt to your students. Adaptation is something that I was also able to use to show Judy how to better her teaching. Judy is a very traditional teacher that follows a plan with little communicative activities and little variety. Watching Megan and me really inspired Judy to spice up her lesson plans and do things differently. I feel like by helping Judy, I am helping her current students and future students reach their full potential.
I used reading, writing and other skills when teaching, but my greatest focus was always speaking and listening. I kept those skills as my main focus because that is what my students needed. Many of my students were young working men that needed to learn to communicate in English for survival in their daily lives. The areas I struggled with the most when teaching was being able to build on no previous knowledge and I definitely needed more preparation in teaching grammar to optimize my teaching. One the biggest things I needed extra preparations in, is building off of no previous knowledge of English. In a higher proficiency level classrooms, I feel like it might be easier to teach new information to students that have the building blocks of learning English. In the classroom, many of my students struggle with the basics. It is hard to start from scratch. I wish I had more preparation with teaching students from the beginning of language learner. I believe that these are skills that can be fixed with preparation and