Teachers Blog

Mark Juba

TBI Kuningan

General English, Business English

A Rewarding Year

It’s exactly a year since I walked through the doors of TBI Kuningan and took the first steps of my teaching career so this seems like an appropriate time to take a few minutes out to reflect.

After completing my CELTA in mid November, I was deemed ready to start the practise of teaching. I can’t pretend I felt ready, but I’m not one to shirk a challenge, and I was desperate to get some ‘real’ teaching time under my belt. People say that you only really start learning to drive after you’ve passed your test. Well, the same could be said of teaching once you’ve completed your CELTA. Those first couple of weeks were a frantic whirlwind of teaching and planning, reading and worrying as I continually questioned my methodology, and whether or not what I was doing was actually helping my students to develop their language skills. On top of that, I had serious doubts as to whether my students were deriving any fun and pleasure from the lessons. I wasn't sure I was and I wasn't experiencing the intense feelings of reward so many teachers talk about.

Well, I’m pleased to report that after ten months in the job, I can honestly say I have had some fantastic teaching moments, and have definitely experienced a handful of those rewarding moments I’d heard others talk about. It is a genuinely wonderful feeling when you hear the groans of children when you tell them it’s time for them to go home: you know you must have done something right if they don’t want to leave the classroom.

Perhaps my most satisfying moment to date as a teacher was working with a teenage class who all appeared to suffer from the global teenage phenomena of surliness and general lack of enthusiasm for anything. Through selecting materials and planning lessons around subjects I thought they would identify with, I proudly watched them develop into one of the more lively, chatty, and enjoyable groups I’ve had the pleasure to work with. Indeed, at the end of the level, one of the students from that class wrote a short essay telling me how I had inspired her to become a teacher!

Some of the funnier moments I’ve experienced include a disconcertingly serious eight year-old student giving me fashion advice, and children from the same class giving me a razor blade as a gift, such is there distaste for my twenty four-hour stubble!

Even though my initial worry about teaching was that I’d made a horrible mistake and chosen the wrong career path, it’s turned out to be one of the most challenging and rewarding years of my professional life.

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expect (v) : think or believe that something will happen