What I Think About Simulated Teaching

The simulated teaching session is the only time when we get to pretend to be a ‘real’ teacher. It’s really an imitation because I have to pretend that my peers are my students. This is the only time that we are exposed to the teaching environment. Unfortunately, the ‘students’ are my peers and obviously, their levels are way higher than secondary school students. They cooperate well with me when I presented and rarely gave me problems. However, in reality, such a happening is rare or perhaps close to zero. But I begin to think that these sessions are useful to me as a pre service teacher. Slowly, I am exposed to my future workplace. Simulated teaching is like a practice for me before heading to the real world. Like what they said, practice makes perfect.

Besides presenting our lesson, we are required to evaluate our peers mainly on their performances, activities and language use. I admit that evaluating my peers is a very tedious job. Sometimes, I get frustrated when my peers did not distribute their worksheets to the evaluators. How am I supposed to evaluate if I didn’t get the chance to even see the worksheet? Anyways, I learn more about myself through the comments made by my peers. They point out my strengths and weaknesses. Most of them praised my language use, that I do not have problems with it. As for my weaknesses, one mentioned that I did not smile enough. Perhaps I wasn’t that friendly towards the students. Another stated that I looked fierce. He said that it could be a good thing because the students will be more obedient towards fierce teachers. I know I can look really fierce but I definitely do not want my students to be so afraid of me that they don’t even want to approach me.

The sessions had taught me a thing or two about teaching. I was extremely nervous before my turn and it affected my speech a little bit. I stumbled on words at the beginning but gradually I picked up the rhythm and go with the flow. I encounter this problem every time I present and I should really do something about it. Like I said earlier, practice makes perfect. Through these sessions, I learnt how to prepare for a lesson. I learnt that I need to be fully prepared before I teach. When I see my friends who did not present wholeheartedly, the attitude affects the students. Hence, I believe that teachers should have the energy and passion to teach. I also discovered that students love having creative teachers around. I applaud my peers who spent a lot of time preparing for the lesson. The result is satisfying especially when I watch my peer students actually having a good time answering the tasks!