My micro-teaching experience

When I first enrolled for my MA I thought that it would be chiefly theoretical. I remember that I wanted it to be a bit practical as well but I wanted to come to Leicester for my studies this year so I accepted the offer anyways. Little did I know though that the course has in fact some practical activities. You see, I’m considered to be a “novice teacher” in the terms of my department which means that I’m a teacher that hasn’t got any experience in teaching yet. Of course I’ve helped a few of my friends before when they’ve been struggling with their essays but I’ve never had the chance to teach an actual class, probably because I chose to do my Master’s degree right after I finished my undergraduate degree. I knew I wanted to finalize my studies in teaching English but I just couldn’t do it after my first degree. Everyone was like “oh cool now that you’ve got a degree in English are you ready to teach?” and I would just stare at them and think “NO”. I felt that I needed to be taught how to do it, I couldn’t just walk into a class and start talking about past tense and gerunds. That’s why I went for the TESOL master’s degree which I am extremely satisfied with.

Back to the practical part of my course then, what I want to talk about today is about my experience in teaching last Friday. The teaching was called “micro-teaching” which basically is trainee teachers (as in the students of the MA course) to teach a 20 minute lesson to their peers and get a review about it from their tutor who observes the whole thing. Sounds a bit stressful but it wasn’t. I think it’s due to the fact that through the year we got to know each other and the atmosphere in the classroom is friendly which makes it less stressful to stand up and teach your classmates. Our tutor also called it a “fun” experience and he said that we are definitely going to enjoy it, and I did.

We did a similar teaching activity on the first term so I was a bit prepared for this one too. However, both of them were only for experience reasons and we weren’t marked for them. I cherish opportunities like these and I tend to take them quite seriously since I feel a bit anxious when it comes to standing in front of the class let alone teach them a whole lesson as well. I would characterize myself as shy and an introvert since I was never the one that would be confident enough to raise their hand in class and participate even if I was 100% sure that my answer was correct. I kind of also feel that choosing to be an English teacher would give me the opportunity to help those silent and shy students in class since I’ve spent my whole life being one of them.

The micro-teaching experience then, left me with positive comments from my tutor that definitely boosted my confidence and made me want to do more. He also pointed out a few mistakes to keep in mind and I feel like I did a great job even if my voice became a bit shaky at the beginning when I started talking 😛 I can confidently say that this degree has given me a great amount of motivation and I’m constantly visualizing myself being a proper English teacher. It has given me so many creative ideas when it comes to lesson planning and I can’t wait to put everything that I’ve learnt so far into practice.