On Reflective teaching: Teacher Paola Andrea Cardona

When someone ask me about a “good class” I think about one where all the objectives that I stated from the beginning went just the way I wanted.

My last course was “Kids 2”: a nice group, eleven students between 8-10 years old, different learning styles: a real challenge.
I found out that dealing with kids doesn’t involve all this concentration and patience most of the people say; when you plan your class in a really organized way. This particular class was about animals (environment, behaviors, etc) and we developed role plays (including me), we had a lot of fun and I went back to my “school time”. It was a great class because the students were participating actively and they understood what the lesson was about. For the first time in this year I’ve been teaching I felt like one of my students, I got involved so much that I could really understand them. Something that made my day was when one of my students (a boy who’s really shy) came to me and said: “teacher, thank you, I had a good time here”.


But of course I’ve had classes in which I’ve ended feeling not so good, for instance, I think that dealing with discipline is not easy at all. When you have 3 students misbehaving, you feel frustrated, or that’s what happened to me.

I remember a class in which I explained a topic quite difficult for the kids: “possessive adjectives”, I was making a draft on the board and I could hear the whispers behind me, 3 boys talking about something that didn’t have to do anything with the class. It was annoying because they were not focused on the class and at the same time weren’t allowing their classmates to pay attention. I tried every single strategy to focus them on the topic but they simply didn’t want to pay attention.

At the end of the class I talked with them and explained me that at school they had have an “English journey” so they were tired about English. Of course I understood them but anyway that situation was very annoying and frustrating.

Paola Andrea Cardona Márquez.