Reflection on my experiences as a Physical Science teacher during school internship

 

To become a teacher is my ambition. I have shaped my academic journey to reach this goal. As the final step to gain the basic qualification to become a teacher, I enrolled for the BEd course during which I could strengthen my basic skills and abilities to become a good teacher. After the necessary training I could do an internship programme for 4months as a Physical science teacher in Emmanuel’s Higher Secondary School Kothanalloor during which I got invaluable experiences that reshaped me to become a competent and influential teacher.

I can proudly say that Emmanuel’s Higher Secondary School is my school. I was very happy that I could do my teaching practice in my alma mater. The many memories during my school days which I treasure sparked in my mind as I went the first day. Some of my teachers were still teaching there. I felt excited to work with them.

I was assigned two divisions-one from standard 8 and another from standard 9. I was little nervous in my first class thinking how the students will behave in my class as they know that I am a teacher trainee. I prepared very well for my first class. And by God’s grace I could manage to overcome my fear and complete my first class. Then I gained confidence and tried to use the theoretical knowledge that I got from B.Ed. classes to become a good teacher. I tried various teaching strategies. As the school was equipped with smart classrooms I could make use of ICT very well. It made the teaching learning process simpler. The harder things could be understood very easily when it was shown using images and videos. In spite of these advantages I faced various threats as the students came to offline mode after a gap of 1.5 years. Most of the students didn’t attend online classes during those days. It was pretty obvious in the classroom interactions. Even the basic arithmetic was tough for the students. Hence, I had to slow down my pace of teaching. The normal teaching hours was not sufficient to teach the concepts properly. The additional substitution periods I got was a blessing for me. Again, when the Covid pandemic situations became worse the classes again went online mode. In my opinion students cannot learn properly in online classes. Less than 30 percent of the students attended online classes. Others had different excuses to skip the class. This led to discontinuity in the process of learning. And those who attended where just passive listeners. Only few had the interest to study. The parents being too much poor in technical knowledge couldn’t guide or control their children properly. The effect of this was clear in the exam that was held when the offline mode was reinstated. Another thing that I felt unhappy about was that I could establish good rapport with a few students only. Rest of them was not cooperating whole heartedly with me during the classroom hours. Sometimes I had to scold them. It had not much effect on them. Even then the classes went smoothly and I could complete the portions. Only thing I feel sad is that I couldn’t instill a love for science in all of them. I had a lot to improve. But I know the limitations of a newbie and felt motivated to study the students more closely and become a better teacher.

The experience that I got from my teaching practice is really precious. I could figure out my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats clearly and shape my path. I could gain first hand experiences in many of the teaching techniques and strategies that ware taught in the B.Ed. classes. I could conduct achievement test, diagnostic test, action research, case study science club activities and many other things. All these have improved my abilities to a great extent.

The happiest part is that many of my students come and talk with me when they see me somewhere like bus stop, even when I couldn’t recognize them. When they call me “teacher” I feel more responsible to the society. In short, the school internship period was really a blessing for me.