Being a teacher: learning through experience

  REFLECTION  Children at play are not playing about. Their games should be seen as their most serious minded activity. - Michel de Montaigne   This year of observation and teaching has helped me to improve my communication skills.   At the beginning of the school year I was a bit scared because I had never been in contact with students who were not speakers of my L1.  However, I was motivated by the fact that in EFL teaching, one does not have to use the L1 when teaching, which seemed to me to give the students a better immersion in the language. I also wanted to see what different teaching strategies were used in Polish schools nowadays, and to learn more about how to teach better. When I started my observations, I realized that I did not have to be afraid to face the group as a teacher, and from the beginning the children treated me and my mentor teacher with great affection. Almost 6 months into this training, I can see that my prediction about learning...