As I sit down to reflect on my year so far as a second year Foundation Phase B.Ed. student, I think about all the challenges both emotionally and physically I have gone through and overcome since the pandemic begun. At the beginning of the year 2021, I was excited to be able to do my Practice Teaching however, because of the lockdown that occurred in September 2021, we were once again unable to go to the schools to practically implement what we have learnt in a classroom, but we were assigned a programme in its place.
The Teacher Choices in Action programme provided me with a different outlook to teaching. Having participated in this programme it allowed to learn and then implement what I have learnt by reviewing lessons done by other teachers and understanding where and how they could have been better or more inclusive of learners’ needs. Throughout this programme, I reflected to my own personal experience inside the classroom and the different methodology teachers used to convey the curriculum. I realized that many teachers do not keep in mind the diversity in the classroom when preparing and teaching a lesson and it has now become my goal to provide inclusive lessons to my learners.
Having gone through 2020, I was adjusted to online learning and already had a set routine in place which made me happy that we were not returning to in-person classes along with the increase COVID-19 infections. I had lost many family members due to COVID-19 and became very anxious when surrounded with people. Over the pandemic I have grown into the person I now am, and I am happy about who I am even though I have a lot more personal development to accomplish. There are a lot of positives and negatives to what has happened in the past 2 years as a result of the pandemic, it allowed people to spend time focusing on themselves and develop their own identity, but it also helped people realize that they are more than okay on their own even though human interaction and connection is essential to us because we are social beings.
I began keeping a journal when I started high school for self-reflection and to record personal development. This allowed me to look back on how much I have grown over the years and learn from previous choices I have made that did not have the outcome I desired. As John Dewey said, “Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”