ITESS profile of a student teacher (Q4)

 

In my ITESS profile reflection at the end of Q1, I wrote that I considered myself to be eager, because I always did my best to successfully complete the formative and summative assessments related to Educational Studies, that I had enhanced my knowledge and teaching skills and was very satisfied with my work and growth at the end of the first quarter of ITESS year 1. As of the beginning of Q4, I can re-confirm my eagerness and satisfaction on my development within ITESS, which is mainly thanks to insightful subjects such as Educational Studies and TESOL. These have  indeed incredibly helped me grow as a teacher, by discovering new theories and strategies that positively influenced my lesson-planning skills.

I still need to work on the “strategic” part of the ITESS profile, since during Q2 and Q3 I fell again into the “panic zone” (Vygotsky) because of subjects I am not confident in, such as Democratic Citizenship and History: I was very demotivated, as I did not see myself passing those exams. Something similar also happened during my internship, in which I had to teach a Social Justice class —one of those subjects I lack background knowledge on. Despite all this, I managed to stay strong, pass the difficult exams and re-gain self confidence as a future teacher.

As for creativity and balance, I am able to see improvements: during Q3 and Q4, I had the opportunity to experiment on new platforms, such as LessonUp, Sutori and Coggle; moreover, I had to find a way to pass a group exam after failing it the first time because of the poor participation of other group members. In this situation, I made a virtue of necessity and took over the project instead of just doing my part and risking to fail again. I always strive for perfection and commit to achieve my goals, so this situation has taught me that if I really want to achieve something, I should not rely on others, but rather do it myself, since not everyone is as eager as I am.