So near the end...

Today, as I have finished with my practice period in the workshop, I'd like to share with you a personal and critical reflection I wrote about this subject, which also applies to all practical subjects in our curriculum.
First of all, I think both the practice period and the topic of assessment were really useful to us as teachers-to-be. Even though most of us may have some teaching experience in institutes or as private teachers, facing thirty students in a big classroom in a public school is definitely another story. I profited from this opportunity a lot, and now I feel I am more prepared to work in a school than I was at the beginning of the year, even though this is my third year working in a private institute with different age groups. Designing an integrative test bearing in mind the characteristics of a certain group of students and preparing activities to evaluate everything we had done during the practice keeping the same context was totally new for me, and therefore has been a practical as well as a valuable experience.
As regards the lessons we observed during the first part of the year, I believe this can be an enriching experience as well as a waste of time. Some form teachers were really helpful and taught wonderful lessons but some others did not like the idea of being observed- I do not blame them for that- and after the class finished I had the feeling that we were a burden for her and for her students and that they were not working in their usual way.
Finally, I would like to make a comment on the plans. In my view, they are the best way to learn how to organize a lesson, in spite of the fact that when we become teachers we no longer plan our classes in such a detailed way. However, during this year I felt that some of the activities we had planned were wrong for the teacher or needed improvement and, in some cases, I really disagreed with the corrections, sometimes because I couldn’t see what was wrong or sometimes because I thought the corrections were unnecessary.
Girls, to tell you the truth, I tried to be as honest as I could and also to include most of the aspects and topics we had dealt with during this year. I believe this kind of subjects has give to most of us all those practical details and pieces of advice that so many theoretical subjects sometimes fail to give.