My final reflection

1. Subject: Práctica Docente lll
Tutor: Aurelia Velazquez
Student: Mariela Gisela Iannaci
My final reflection
Description
As a teacher-to-be, I had to do my practicums at secondary level in the province of San Luis.
However, given the pandemic we have been going through, I had to deliver my practicums
virtually. The class English teacher told me that he had been teaching “the verb to be”, and
that I had to teach “the present Continuous tense” and “the Present Simple tense”. After
having planned the didactic units, I had to upload one set of activities per week to the school
platform. At first, I felt quite lost since I had never taught English through a school platform
before. Nevertheless, the class English teacher kindly explained to me how to upload the study
material and tasks to the platform. The problem came up when I accessed the school platform
to correct the students´ tasks and observed that only two out of the five students had
uploaded their tasks. Consequently, I felt absolutely disappointed since I had devoted time and
effort to planning appealing activities that could engage students.
Feelings
I felt deeply distressed at this incident. I thought that maybe students hadn´t done their tasks
because the set of activities hadn’t met their expectations. I felt very confused since my
practicum teacher as well as the class English teacher had liked all the activities planned. All
this situation made me reflect on the fact that I urgently needed to talk with the class English
teacher about the problem. He told me that he had had the same problem and as a
consequence, he had decided to work only with the students who sent him their tasks. He
advised me to report this problem to the headmaster. For this reason, I talked with the
headmaster and he suggested I should get in touch with the students´ parents to inform them
about their children´s class performance. After having done so, the parents said that they
would do their best to encourage their children to do their tasks.
Evaluation
During the following weeks, the situation remained the same. In order to solve this problem, I
decided to make use of my intuition. Scrivener states that “Use of intuition is fundamental to
teaching. It is the skill of spontaneously understanding something.”1
. He also mentions
“Intuitive responses are important in teaching because things happen so fast in lesson time
and there is so much to notice, flying at us all at once: how the activity is proceeding, how each
student is reacting, etc.” 2
Taking Scrivener´s statements into account, I got in touch with the
1
SCRIVENER, Jim (2013) Language Teaching. Chapter 3” Classroom management”, page 78.
2
SCRIVENER, Jim (2013) Language Teaching. Chapter 3” Classroom management”, page 78.

2. Subject: Práctica Docente lll
Tutor: Aurelia Velazquez
Student: Mariela Gisela Iannaci
students sending them private messages through the school platform. By doing so, maybe I
could learn why they weren´t doing their tasks. Unfortunately, I never got any response from
them. Finally, I thought that talking with some teachers who worked at the school would help
me understand the problem. I talked with the ICT teacher. She told me she was going through
the same situation, which made me feel more relieved.
In spite of the lack of participation or response on the part of 60% of my students, I think that
my practicums were a good experience after all. The two students who participated actively
did a great job. They not only asked me when they had some doubts but they also did all the
tasks excellently. What’s more, I always provided them with positive feedback so as to
motivate them. Steven McDonough (2012, page 370) states that giving students feedback
about their tasks is a good way to promote their motivation.
Analysis
Throughout my practicums, I not only sent messages to students, but I also sent messages to
their parents in order to get some positive response. However, the situation became worse
since parents replied that they couldn´t do anything to change the situation. It is important to
mention that when I did my face to face practicums last year, I taught English to the same
students. I can say that all five students showed interest all the time and did all their activities
responsibly. For this reason, I felt sad and frustrated because I knew that they had great
potential to learn. Scrivener states “If students engage in a more focused, concentrated way in
virtual worlds (much as they do when immersed in games) might this be a better way to work
with them than by forcing them into classrooms that they find dull and uninspiring? Perhaps
the natural environment for 21 st-Century teaching is virtual.”3
However, I can say that I don´t
agree with this statement since virtual teaching didn´t seem to be a better way for the other
three students.
Conclusion
I believe I should have tried to do other things. I should have talked with the class tutor and
the headmaster several times for them to help me get closer to the students. Davies and
Pearse claim that “ … it is important to maintain a good rapport with children, and to foster an
affectionate and co-operative atmosphere.”4
I felt that if I had had a closer interaction with
students, I would have managed to make them participate in my lessons. Also, I would have
made them aware of the importance of learning English. Davies and Pearse state, “English
3
Scrivener, Jim (2013), “Using technology”, chapter 14, page:347.
4
Paul Davies and Eric Pearse, “Success in English Teaching”, Chapter 8, page: 128.
Comentado [A1]: Unfortunately, this situation was too
frequent throughout our country.
Comentado [A2]: These students will have to keep on
working on the topics they haven´t covered this year…

3. Subject: Práctica Docente lll
Tutor: Aurelia Velazquez
Student: Mariela Gisela Iannaci
really could be useful at some time in their lives”. 5
I felt that if I had done the things
mentioned before, I would have changed the situation for the better.
Action Plan
To conclude, I am aware that I have to make many changes to enhance my teaching in the
future. If by any chance, the same happens to me in the future and my students do not upload
their tasks to the school platform, I will ask my headmaster for advice and I will propose
working together in order to find a solution to the problem. I will also read journals,
newsletters, and Internet publications to find out about similar cases and solutions. All things
considered, I would like to mention that this experience not only helped me understand and
overcome my mistakes, but it also helped me in my learning process as a teacher-to-be.
5
Paul Davies and Eric Pearse, “Success in English Teaching”, Chapter 1, page: 14.
Comentado [A3]: Congrats on your hard work, Mariela!
You´ve grown as a professional. ☺