PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE DIARY

Yesterday was my first Teacher's Day as an educator and, as this is my final blog entry for the course, I want to share with you a final thought about my short but very fulfilling journey as an educator. About four years ago I was a naive kid who was still in high school and studied a bit of English during the weekends as a hobby. Little did I know that, after spending almost 5 years of my life in front of dozens of English teachers as a student, eventually I'll become one myself. It certainly was unexpected and, to be honest, a little scary at the beginning as I knew that having as responsibility the education of hundreds of young children wouldn't be an easy task. Through my short life, I've witnessed the power and influence teacher could have over a student's life, for better or for worse. I remember having horrible teachers that used to discourage students, pointing out each and every single one of their setbacks and losing their mind every time something ...

As today I've finished my last practice session from my Professional Practice class, I would like you to share with you a little bit of my experience. Some months ago, when I learned that one of the subjects for this semester was going to be Professional Practice, I was a little bit concerned as, although I had been working for almost a year, I didn't feel that I was experienced enough to be constantly observed by someone whose particular job was criticizing my class, even though it was constructive criticism. Despite that, I felt that I needed to challenge myself and I just decided to go for it. I was lucky enough to have all my practice sessions in the place that I'm currently working, which is a little private English institution in Azcapotcalzo and, although I thought that it was going to be a bit easier as I was familiar with the place, it surprisingly was not as simple as I expected. I kinda felt that I had the responsibility of stepping up my English-teacher gam...

Social media has become such an elemental part of our lives that, beyond allowing us to communicate with our beloved ones and share a little bit about us with the world, it has transformed into a tool for so many other fields that enables us to become our own bosses to run the business of a lifetime or even our own teachers to learn how to cook, play an instrument or speak a language at the click of a button. As English educators, rather than ignore this reality, it is important for us to acknowledge it, embrace it, and use it in our favor to potentialize our students' linguistic skills in the second language. For that reason, in this entry, I want to share with you some ideas on how you can use Youtuber, Twitter and other social media platform in your classroom to help your students to practice a little bit the language: 1. Youtube : Have a (private) YouTube channel exclusively for the class and assign students to upload short-films including role-plays (interviews, talk show...