Educational Autobiography

Educational Autobiography

I spent my thirteen years of primary and secondary school at Neiva, Huila. I started my education process in a kindergarten named “Santa Isabel”. I was 5 years old when I began my preschool. At that time, it was so difficult to go to the kindergarten because I lived far away from it and there wasn’t a means of public transportation. Besides, I couldn’t study in another place close to my house because there weren’t other schools. I lived in a neighborhood where few people lived there.  Fortunately, my parents always found a way to take me to the kindergarten.

Then, I spent part of my primary school at “El caguán”. I studied for three years there. It was difficult for me because I wasn’t a girl who had many friends. Even, I always felt afraid of talking with others. So, I just went to the school and pay attention to the teacher in classes. Then, my parents decided to take me to another school. Thus, I started to study at “Agustin Codazzi”. When I got there, it was totally different for me because I began my fourth grade and one of my neighbors studied with me. I felt more confident since I had somebody who I knew. And I started to share much time with other guys.

In my fifth grade, I had the worst experience of my learning process with the teacher who was in charge of my group. She taught us all the subjects. One day, in English class, we had to learn the alphabet by hurt. Then, the teacher asked it to each student. When it was my turn, I came in front of the class and I started to say the alphabet but I made some mistakes and my teacher told me that I was wrong and she didn´t let me to finish. I felt really bad because she didn´t appreciate the effort of any of their students. She was so rude and it didn´t help us to improve or feel motivate.

I continue studying at the school “Agustin Codazzi” for two years. In my sixth and seventh grade, everything changed for me because in this grades, each subject was taught by a teacher. I felt really well with it. In this two years, I had an excellent English teacher. He was the teacher who encouraged me to learn English. He always tried to do his best with his students. I admired him because he always showed that he loved what he was doing, teaching.

Then, I moved to another school “Departamental Tierra de Promisión”. I spent the rest of my secondary there. In eighth and ninth grade, I had the same English teacher and she was a good teacher since she helped me to improve my English. There was an event about the spelling at the school and she told me if I wanted to participate. She helped me to be prepared and I got some money since I won one of the contest. This experience helped me to control my shyness when I spoke in front of others.

In tenth and eleventh grade, I did the modality of specialization in English. It was excellent since I got really involved with the language. Now, I think that I learned a lot when I was in this course. I had two teachers in these grades. One of them taught her lessons in the morning and the other taught the lessons in the afternoon. Both of them were perfect teachers. They had the vocation and I could notice in the way that they taught, the activities that they planned for her students, the classes always had something new and innovative. I loved their classes. In these two years, I felt really motivated to continue studying English. I graduated from high school in 2014.

In 2015, I started to study at ILEUSCO because we did not have enough money to pay for the university. At ILEUSCO, I did a placement test, so, I began in level sixth. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel so good there. But, I tried to finish the level sixth. In 2015-2, I had the opportunity to study at the university. It was perfect because I wanted to be in the ELT program. When I started to study, I liked it a lot. Almost all the subjects were really interesting and also each one of them helped me to improve my learning process to become a teacher. There was a factor that I did not like so much, it was about some teachers who had a lot of theory on their minds and it sounded excellent. But they did not put the theory into practice. In one of the first semesters, I feel so demotivated, even I thought that I did not want to be in this program. Then, I understood that we can have good and bad times and the important issue is to overcome all the obstacles you can find in the process. Now, when I started to teach in my first practicum, I realized that this profession is a beautiful one but also a difficult one. You need to love what you do in order to have a successful process when you are teaching. 

Ninth Journal

Week from July 23rd to July 26th, 2019.

In this week, I have two hours of classes with both groups. On Tuesday, I had classes with 801 and I did my last intervention from the innovation plan. It was excellent. My students were participating a lot. I could realize that each intervention has helped them to improve in the reading comprehension skills since in this last intervention, my students could answer a nineteen percent of the questions and they did it really well. In this intervention, I tried to do more activities that caught my students’ attention. The first activity that I had prepared, they loved it. In this activity, I gave them the title of the story and they had to draw what comes to their mind when they listened to the title of the story. The activity that I liked the most was” the discussion” in which I read a statement related to the story and my students had to answer if they agreed or not and why. I liked this activity because I thought that I couldn´t achieve what I wanted for this class. But, it was totally different, my students’ participation in the discussion was excellent.

On Friday, I had classes with 802, this group is a difficult one. So, I always try to do my best with them. In this class, I started with a matching game, it was one of the activities in which they participated without making a mess in the classroom. They tried to do the activities although it is difficult when most of them did not pay attention to what they had to do. I had to repeat several times and asked them to be quiet all the time.  In the second hour, I asked them to write dialogue about a person who is ordering food in a restaurant. They had to work in groups and I was really surprised because they behave well. Although they were talkative, they did the exercise. Finally, they had to perform the dialogue in front of the class and most of them did it even when they felt nervous and they made some pronunciation mistakes. This last class was better than the other classes in this week. 

Metaphor

When I look up the picture of the bicycle and I try to relate it with the concept of education, specifically in learning how to speak English. In my own experience, I can say that these two processes can be compared to each other being that each one of them has a theory but it is necessary to put everything into practice. For instance, when we learn how to ride a bike, we learn things such as how to paddle and how to be balanced as when we learn English, we learn some patterns and grammar rules. In both cases, it is necessary to practice because we learn by doing. Riding a bike and speaking English are two processes which need dedication and perseverance. 

Eighth Journal

Week from July 16th to July 19th, 2019.

This week was an amazing one, my students did really well taking into account several factors such as their behavior which was so good and their active participation. I feel really glad about it because I had prepared my classes in order for my students to like them, to enjoy them. I had the opportunity to teach all the lessons in 802. The classes were pretty good. We did all the activities that I had prepared. I think it was one of the best classes that I have had with them being that they usually misbehave and there are some of them who do not like to participate but they were doing the exercises in this lesson. One of their favorite activities was when they had to do a poster about their favorite food. So, they did a drawing of their food, they wrote the ingredients and why this food like to them. Each one of them did the poster and it was really nice.  Another activity that they liked was the activity called "find someone who?". I think it was a good activity to do with my students but next time I had to be really careful because they can become crazy if I do not give them good and clear instructions.

In this week, I had only one hour with 801. I did another intervention of my innovation plan. I have realized that my students have improved a lot because in this intervention, they did it really well when they were answering the reading comprehension questions. Besides, they felt more confident when I asked them to read a paragraph they did it, even when they knew that they were going to make some mistakes in terms of pronunciation. It is rewarding for me that my students show interest in what we are doing. Also, I feel happy when I see my students’ improvement.

Seventh Journal

Week from July 9th to July 12th, 2019.

In this week, I had classes with both groups. These classes were a little difficult being that students came back from vacation and they did not want to do anything. They were so talkative and lazy. On Tuesday, I had classes with 801. In this class, I did another intervention. When I started the activities, students did not want to participate so I had to change a little bit what I was going to do. First, I was going to do an exercise called “speaking cards”. But, I did the activity “acting a situation”. Some of my students had to come in front of the class and I gave them a situation and they had to act in order for their partners to guess what they were doing. It made them feel more excited about the class. Finally, I could make my students feel more interested in the rest of the activities that I had prepared for the class.

On Friday, I had classes with 802. They were not different as they are almost ever. They did not want to participate, they were talkative. There are some couples in the class, so, I tried to work with that,  But, it is really difficult when they do not help with their behavior. Even, my cooperator teacher helped me this class but it was almost impossible to work with them. I felt so frustrated in this class because I always tried to prepare my class with exercise that I know they will like them. But, it was not possible to carry out the activities.  So, I tried to do only one in which students had to write some sentences in first conditional according to some pictures that I showed them.

Sixth Journal

Week from June 11th to June 14th, 2019.

In this week, I had classes with both groups but  I couldn’t do the activities that I had planned because there were some extra activities. On Tuesday 11th, I had classes with 801. In the first hour, I implemented the first part of the third intervention of my innovation plan. In the second hour, the students were taken the test for the second term. The first part of the intervention was really good. My students had to read a short story of three paragraphs and while they were reading, they had to look for the unknown words. Then, they had to do a drawing which represented what happened in one of the paragraphs of the story. My students were attentive in this class because they like this kind of activities. On Wednesday 12th, I had classes with 801 and 802. With the first group, I did the second part of my intervention. I think that part was better than the first one because students were participating in the whole class. The students took turns to read the story and they did really well. I was surprised because I think they were going to be very shy when I asked to read but it was totally different, they did it and they made little mistakes in terms of pronunciation. Finally, they have to answer some questions about the story in a game called “show us the card” in which students had to choose one number of eight cards that were on the board and each card had a question.  I also had a class with 802, but on this day I couldn't do any activity because students were taken the test for the second term.

On Friday 14th, we did not have classes because the school had an activity “Sampedro”. I think this kind of activities has not helped me with my students in 802 grade because I have missed many classes with them.  Time has been my biggest problem with them, I couldn’t get used to them and I couldn’t know them a lot as I did with 801.

Fifth Journal

Week from June 4th to June 7th, 2019

In this week, I had all the classes with 801. On Tuesday, I did the second intervention of my innovation plan and it was really good. My students like the idea of using short stories to improve reading comprehension skills. In this intervention, I did a pre-reading activity called questions from pictures in order to contextualize students with the short story. In the while activity, students had to read the short story and write five sentences that summarize the story. Finally, the post-reading the activity was a question quiz. My students did really well, they participated in all the activities and they enjoyed it. On Wednesday, It was horrible, When I came to the classroom, students were shouted and they did not want to be quiet. Also, my supervisor went that day to observe my class and it was terrible. I planned activity in order to review vocabulary, it was a crossword and my students liked it a lot. But, it was a mess when I asked them to complete a big crossword that I did in cardboard and put on the board, because of all of them wanted to participate and there were just ten words. The next time that I do this kind of activities, I will choose the students to participate.

This week, the class with 802 was just an hour, and I did the same activity (crossword). This activity was better with them because they behaved well and when we had to complete the crossword on the board, I chose the students. Some of them wanted to participate and they were a little angry because they couldn’t do it. I did not feel really well but I did not want to have a mess in my classroom again.