Substituting a teacher...

I've been asked to substitute my tutor teacher twice this week and it's been a great opportunity to learn a lot from my students and from everything I might encounter when teaching my own lessons...

Before heading for class, I was given the lesson plan and I had noticed much relevant information wasn't on the lesson plan. Things like, how the teacher explains the meaning of certain key words, the vocabulary or an English tense...

I had observed the teacher on previous lessons and I could fairly figure out how to handle this situation. However, I thought it was much better to try to do it my own way.

During the class, I found myself at ease when students got to understand the meaning I was supposed to teach and it was rather easy to answer their questions as well until I found myself dealing with several disciplinary issues.

Some students were disrupting the lesson, laughing and chatting with their classmates and I didnt pay too much attention to that in the beginning, I just looked at them and told them to be quiet but when I turned around the noise started again and things started to get worse. I remember students were working on a practice handout while I was checking their work and answering some of their questions....Then I noticed some students were whispering and giggling behind me until I actually felt something on my back... I noticed that some students had sticked a foamy-handmade donkey tail on my back and what's even worse, they were all mocking me!!

I felt awfully mad and started shouting at them, I even told them that they were going to very serious problems when Magdalena (my tutor teacher) knew about what had happened...

Then, in a matter of seconds, all of them sat down and went quiet immidiately...

luckily though, I knew my class was about finish...

Later that day I regretted the way I had reacted, so I talked to Maggy about it and she told me these kinds of situations were actually very common, it was a way of testing teachers yet the way I had reacted let them know I was not going to accept that kind of behavior. Hence, they were probably not going to do it again...and yeah, the never did it a single time since that day.