Many teachers come to school with the idea that they will give a valuable contribution to the educational system and that they will become the most important thing for their students, those teachers who will be remembered all their lives, that was I thought when I ventured into what was one of the biggest challenges of my life.

In my country, Venezuela, due to the migration crisis, there are practically no teachers in the schools, some colleagues from the university asked me to help and teach for a year, I agreed to give math to several high school courses and I want to share my experience and some advices.

It is worth saying that I do not offer my advice and recommendations as a methodological guide. This is just a summary of my experience in this year of work, which can give other newcomers to the profession something to think about.

First problems.

The level of responsibility is quite high. The secondary teacher deals with difficult deadlines almost every day. It is necessary to correct the work, to do the task (and I am a supporter of creativity, that is, not only to copy the training manual, but to try to invent), without forgetting the requests of the parents.

In this sense, a person without preparation (and I in college, to be honest, I was not the most diligent student) could be easily confused. Therefore, to all those who take their first steps, I advise you to optimize your work with the help of applications (I used ToDolist in android), it will remind you of the things that could come out of your head when there are many issues to attend. The old school teachers keep a diary, but I think this is more a matter of habit and the use of applications here will be more effective.

Another problem that arises for beginning teachers is the preparation of the lessons. For many, the guide is that brilliant teacher who gave us classes in the past (We all have in our memory a teacher like that), who, at first sight, easily and efficiently handled surprising lessons. This was also my example, however, this impression can be misleading.

I realized that the teaching methods they used in me did not work, those old practice books are written in a dry and harsh language, incomprehensible to the current generation of school children. I had to create every day for a year without previous experience a series of different lessons that will combine certain qualities. They had to be fun, exciting, informative, easy to digest and combine a form of play that would facilitate understanding of the topics.

It is clear that a revolutionary with a touch of youthful Marxist lives in all young teachers, but the way to create an effective own content takes many years, years of trial and error, ask any teacher. Of course, sometimes I managed to devise a lesson idea in a minute, such lessons were even valuable and interesting, but inspiration is a difficult thing to achieve and quite variable, and there are lessons that require attention to detail. You have to create your own program and implement new ideas that must be carried out gradually and carefully.

All day at school?

Another trap for a beginning teacher is in the delicate limits of work and personal things. For me, in school, the profession of the teacher seemed easy: Think about it, teach it for two hours and welcome freedom. But in fact it is not like that, the teacher's work does not end when the bell rings, it does not have a definite limit.

The guys today are difficult, are overexposed to much information, are imperative and rather impertinent, but with a great hunger to learn.

The school as a workplace.

Here the level of responsibility is greater than a job in a company, it is necessary to immediately abandon the comfort zone (which is an important condition for personal progress) and correspond with the behavior model of the adult person.

Another aspect worthy of mention is that the skills to speak in public improve remarkably. After six lessons per day, you will not be afraid to speak in front of any audience, the teacher becomes here a poet, an artist, a demagogue and a moderator of discussions. The school for young teachers has the opportunity to perfect many skills.

For those whose the money is the only and main motivation for work, here there can be frustration. Maybe it's because of my idealistic beliefs, but even so, for me, a teacher always has more to do with vocation.
After all, the boys, whom you will teach, are not to blame for the fact that they did not get the best teacher. Therefore, you must that teacher.

Of course, it is impossible to become ideal, but it is necessary to constantly approach being ideal.

A true great teacher is one who sees his work in school as a ministry and his role in it as a kind of mission. Not only is giving a wonderful lesson, transfer knowledge to children and build intellectual skills, give value to knowledge, is to be aware that the main idea of education is to save the child. A teacher is a person who points the way, and to each student in particular, since all children are different. It is necessary to help the child to become himself, to reveal in him all that nature has endowed him with, to help overcome moral illiteracy and to train in them skills that will help him to live among people.

I will not continue teaching, it was a wonderful experience but I look for other paths in my life, but to those who follow that path I wish you luck and success in this hard but satisfactory road, they have my admiration.

Thank you for reading.

@rikrd3