My Growth

Before IAAT...

When I began contemplating moving from corporate to teaching, there were so many challenges and hurdles I could foresee that I, at time thought would be unable to face. All my thoughts were consumed about what I would do as a teacher. What do I teach? How do I teach? What resources do I use? What kind of teacher would I be? All these questions seemed to be revolving around me. I assumed that if I took care of learning my subject matter and found interesting ways to teach them, I would be a great teacher.

After joining IAAT...

IAAT introduced to me an element that I so comfortably was oblivious about: the student - teacher dynamics. At the beginning of the course, everything seemed new. I was questioning and debating many ideas that were introduced around the teaching learning experiences in the classroom. The course gave us the platform to our questions and to put forth our challenges. In fact we were encouraged to not agree with everything that was taught to us. We were asked to think, reflect, challenge a lot of ideas until it made sense to us in all practicality.

Since I was used to seeing a certain kind of classroom dynamics when I was a child, I tried extending those in my practice teaching as well. Gradually I could see the gaps in my approach. I see where I was not doing well, and places that needed attention. The new ideas that I once challenged made sense. I could see the student teacher relationship unfold beautifully with the powerful teaching learning techniques that I had learnt. This way of learning helped me in the classroom because I believe in these techniques. As I practice them and I could see them being effective, and hence I follow these practices. I totally admire the idea where the faculty don't ask you to follow something unless we are convinced ourselves. This has helped me greatly as a teacher.

My initial challenges:

One of my initial challenges was finding my place in the classroom. I am not a teacher, I am not a student, I am a resident teacher observing their class, and slowly beginning to take lessons. I did not know how to be assertive. How to establish and help the students follow the classroom norms. How do I respond when they say pass lewd comments to each other? There were so many doubts and questions in the initial days of practice

What helped me

The reflection journal helped me. I wrote a couple of incidents in my reflection journal and as I wrote the problem became clear. All those questions came from a place of uncertainty, fear and insecurity. I was not worried about the students being rude, I was actually worried about how I would feel if the students did not listen to me. I was worried what if a child choses to continue doing he was doing and other kids follow the trend. I was worried of disrespect.

I spoke with my fellow RTs and almost everyone felt the same way. We all decided that as time goes, we would all ease into our roles.

I spoke about my fears with my CT as well. She said it was very common to feel what I was feeling and that we cannot avoid those situations. All we could do is to not take them personally. I realized that once I remove the element of ego from the picture, the problem seemed very small and easily solvable.

Then I made a plan thinking of all the questions doubts, or challenges that the students would face. My plan did not pan out the way I imagined, but the lesson went well. The reason that happened was because I was calm and I was present during the class. I was able to think and connect with the students and talk in a way that made sense to them. And mentoring had a huge role to play in it because, there were a couple of things my TE brought my focus to - What is the purpose of the lesson? And what kind of an environment are you creating your the children? Every time I planned a lesson I kept these questions in mind and my instincts were able to answer them seamlessly. All this happened because of my strengthening relationship with my students.