my school practice

Alexey Leushkin, 502
My School Practice
If you are asked to answer what teaching means for you, what would you say? Is it science or probably art? Does a teacher deal only with pure theoretical knowledge or he takes a deep insight into pupils’ nature as well? Is teaching only the question of maintaining discipline or it also tackles some problems of stimulating children’s interest to study and creating their enthusiasm to subjects? It seems obvious to me that before you once tried to be a tutor or a teacher, you would never be able to find the right answers to these questions. Fortunately for me, I have already had a chance to practice my teaching skills and methods in school. And now I perfectly understand what teaching really is. Thus, I would like to share my experience with you.
Last year I was lucky enough to be a probationer in the first gymnasium of Nizhny Novgorod. This school is well-known for its high level of studying especially in linguistics. I was to work with the pupils who studied in the eighth class, I had to lead the lessons of German. The first acute problem that I was confronted with is an awkward age of my students. Being teenagers, they tended to be immensely emotional and even strongly impulsive at times, that is why I had to find the way to provide an incentive for their inquisitiveness, to get them interested in the German language and not to fail to establish discipline at the same time. Trying to be a nobly tolerant and benevolent teacher, I decided to take up a firm attitude from the very beginning. Besides, working day and night I tried to make my lessons as exciting for pupils as possible by including role plays and command creative tasks in my lessons. However, at first I failed to capture everyone’s attention. So i analized the pupuils` behaviour, their habbits and interests for me to find an individual approach to every child. I must admit that working in the first gymnasium was not really difficult for me because of children`s resonsobility and diligence.
However, teaching is no easy matter. And this year i faced some really acute problems. Firstly, i had to lead not only German classes but English as well, consequently, it took me much more time and effort to get ready for the classes. Besides, the age of my pupils varied from 11 years old to 16 years old as i worked with the fifth and the tenth classes. So i needed to be immensely flexible to adapt to diffirent situations, to show adequate response to small children as well as to teenagers, which demanded absolutely different approaches. Moreover, i must admit that working with pupils from regural school from Dzerzhinsk is much more difficult, just because of their unwillingness to study and their poor speaking skills. It took me much effort to evoke their interest to German or English. Another thing that i found extremely difficult was my teaching the seventh class where studied children with different diseases, some of them were even anable to read in English, that is why i had to work my classes over more properly.
To conclude, i would like to say that for me teaching is both a science and an art.It tackles diverse and multiple tasks to cope with. A good teacher should always be ready to overcome any difficulties, to be patient and benevolent. Of course there is no one universal appropriate method ob being an excellent teacher. But the main thing that i have learnt is that being a teacher is impossible without love to your pupils.