Expectations and deceptions

Before starting an Internship period, I ask myself many questions like… How will my tutor be? Which methodology will he/she follow? Will I adapt easily to the class? And, what about the children? How will they be?  How will they receive me?

I remember that, when I started my first internship three years ago, I was really scared and nervous because I had never experienced the teacher role before, so I felt very insecure on it. However, last year I faced my first day in a very different way, more calm and with more self confidence. This year, the first day at school has also been totally different. I have more experience as I’ve been working in a language school during some months, so I see everything from a different point of view. Now, I am disposed to learn from each single moment without being too much worried about making a good impression on children. I think that this change of mind is because now I understand what be a teacher means, what our functions are, and what I have to do to accomplish them. I have overcome the transition period between being a student and being a teacher, and now I know what my place is.

I’ve been always very realistic and I’ve been always aware that most of the methods and methodologies that we have studied during these four years at the University haven’t arrived yet to schools. However, I admit that I expected to see a different perception of Education during my stay at this school, but the truth is that it hasn’t changed at all since I was little. This is a big problem, since society and, therefore, children have changed a lot in a few years. We live in the multimedia and the Internet era, in which we can have access to all the information we want with just one click. For this reason, educational standards would have also changed and adapt to this new time we are living. It’s true that now, we have interactive whiteboards and, in some cases, tablets and computers in the classrooms, but in the background, everything remains the same. For example, in Maths we are still obsessed with teaching the classical algorithms of the main arithmetic operations since very young, instead of focusing on the concept and on the problem solving. Why are we doing this if we have an amount of machines that can do it for ourselves? I haven’t heard yet a coherent response apart from: “they need to know how to add and subtract” I’m sorry, but… why? Do you think that they are really learning how to add or subtract? No, they are only learning one way of doing that, only an algorithm among the many that exist just because someone said that this one is the best one.

Teachers are afraid of changing their ways. Well, I want to think so, because otherwise I will have to admit that maybe they are too lazy to sit down to analyze the situation, and start working on it, even if it means that they have to invest some of their free time. I think that the main problem is that a big part of the Teaching Stuff is old people that come from another time, and that are not prepared to assume most of the nowadays educational challenges. For example, how can someone that doesn’t know how to turn on a computer, or what the word software means, introduce the students in the informatics world? I know that the State offers some re-educational courses, but when you are used to perform in a particular way, is very difficult to change it and you need not to be tired and to do it with enthusiasm and vitality.

So, one of my first reflections about the Educational System is that the teacher stuff needs a constant renewal in order to let the new people and, therefore, the new ideas enter to the schools. Otherwise, these are becoming in old-fashioned spaces, that doesn't prepare students for the future that awaits for them, but for a past that they will never know.