Classroom Day 3 and Getting Ready for the Training

We had the third classroom day yesterday. It was so great to see the other students f2f and not just online! We started to plan our next course. I think it is going to be an interesting one!

We were asked to write a poem about yesterday. Here is mine.

Fellow students

Inspiring, Creative, Challenging

Laughing, Talking,  Learning

Friends

Yesterday I learned a new presentation method: Pecha Kucha. It was pretty fun yet challenging. I did not have time to practice mine, and I was a bit lost every now and then with my pictures. That made me "to hide" behind the teacher's desk with my notes. Well, I took the risk and learned from it! 

I did get some slightly odd feedback about my presentation though. My pronunciation was described "so funny" and it was seen as a disadvantage. I think it would have been better to say something like "pay attention when pronouncing certain words", but now I feel as if my way to talk is really horrible. Would be interesting to know how to start improving my pronunciation then.. After all, we are non-native speakers, and I strongly feel that being able to communicate is much more important than pronouncing each word correctly... 

Hopefully my poor students can still listen to me. I have a funny feeling it is mainly the other Finns who are so keen in judging someone else's language skills. And then we wonder why Finns are shy to speak foreign languages... Anyhow, I learned from this experience never ever to comment about my student's pronunciation since I will not be teaching English but in English. I did get some good constructive feedback too: I shall remember to pay more attention to the non-verbal cues in the future!

Last night I also booked the flight tickets to the UK. I am so looking forward to my teaching training, yet a bit nervous.

Teaching Practice

My next challenge is the teaching practice that takes place end of Febryary / beginning of March in the UK. If you are interested in reading more about my experience, please go to the page "Training abroad". I will not be mentioning the name of the school here,  but I can tell you that it is a state school in Essex offering for example A-levels and Applied A-levels in Business. In the Training abroad page I will be writing a diary during my training. 

So my next step is to finish my core plan, and make an online questionnaire for the students in order to learn to know them a bit better before my training starts. I shall also learn more about the Britain's school system: GCSE, GCE, A-levels, Applied A-levels, exam boards... They are all new to me..

I had lack of motivation towards these studies in the beginning of this year. It feels as if nothing was going smoothly from my home institution's side. There is too much hassle due to lack of information, and it has an effect on not just motivation but also graduation. I for example will not graduate this year. It is a shame, but on the other hand making that decision took pressure off from completing everything this year. 

Our study group is great though, and they helped me to get the spirit back! A good tip for all study groups: set up a closed FB group where you can communicate with each others! It is not just good for keeping up the motivation, but also for sharing information when the situation is unclear.

But I got my motivation back when I started writing my core plan. I am looking forward to my training. Luckily I have got a very good supervisor in the receiving school!