Dear Julia Mikhailovna, I am really sorry for being so late, but all this time I felt
exhausted after the practice. Now I am ready for studying again.
All these events (especially paper filling) were so stressful that I could not
understand how could that ruin my mood so bad for a month. I could not imagine that I
am such a soft person, but to be honest, I am complaining about it right now for a
reason.
It all started nicely. I met the teachers and the first impression was good. I have
conducted few lessons of English and the teacher said almost nothing critically
important to me. She just said that I had done well. Later, she kept saying that my
lessons are getting better every day and almost nothing else. And then I got sick. After
three days of staying home, the teacher asked me to give her textbooks back (which I
took to prepare for the next lesson), but I failed to do so and that made really mad. I
could feel that from that moment she could not see me without annoyance.
After that, I write her a message. I asked if they have passed some new material,
but she answered that I should come earlier the next day so we could plan the lesson.
And I did. Just imagine the situation – I do just as the teacher asks me and all of a
sudden she says: “Why are you not prepared? We haven’t passed any new material, so
why are you not ready for the lesson?”. Everybody knows that I may be a perverse
person, but even than I decided to keep silence. And guess what? All of a sudden, she
said everything she thought about me as a teacher – she criticized me like I was one of
the worst teachers in the world no matter that she almost did not say a single word
before that moment. I was furious, broken and simply upset. The teacher said the same
to the practice head (my French teacher) and after that even she thought about me that
way as well. I was really disappointed. But after all I decided that It doesn’t really matter
which mark I will get if I really enjoy being a teacher.
Now that I finally stopped crying, I can actually tell you about my impressions.
Shortly speaking, It was fun. And yes, it was pretty difficult to keep discipline, but I
did everything I could to teach them at least something. It was fun to play games, it was
fun to hear the reasons why someone didn’t do the homework and it was fun to adapt to
different situations. Once, a pupil told me that she couldn’t bring her homework that day
because her cat stole it from her. She said that the cat “is really weird, because it
regulary steals different things so nobody could find them”.
The French lessons were even more challenging for me because I simply don’t
like this language, unlike English. But it was even more interesting due to the fact that
those pupils were older. But unfortunately I have only conducted three lessons of
French. I didn’t have time to correct the impression of me and improve my lessons so I
couldn’t get a better mark.
And that is the main problem of this challenging event – the time. Students have
very little time to finish their practice, especially considering the fact that there are plenty
of tasks besides lessons. On paper, I have conducted eight English lessons and six
French lessons, plus three extracurricular activities. But in fact, I actually had only eight
English lessons, three (!) French lessons and only one (!) extracurricular activity. I
simply didn’t have time for completing all the tasks, so didn’t most of other students. In
my opinion, it’s a bad idea to force students to conduct lessons in two languages at
once. Because in fact, in order to have time to conduct all seven lessons in two
languages, you need to start conducting them at the same time. It is exhausting and
confusing. In addition, students are entrusted with too many useless tasks such as
analyzes of other people's lessons in the amount of twenty pieces or psychological
analyzes of specific students. This is a good shake for your mind, a test for resistance to
stress and an interesting experience, but after all paperwork spoils the whole
impression.