Not born but made

As I have been a student for almost seventeen years already, I am used to the usual classroom setting wherein I have to sit for hours and do my best to listen to the lectures delivered by the teacher. This day was just like those days, only with some kind of twist. Instead of listening as a student, I listened as a co-teacher and an observer as the same time. 

Our group was assigned to a classroom teaching for the culmination activity of our PT138 class. Here we were required to teach the third year PT students the concepts and principles of therapeutic exercise. In all honesty, I was not thrilled upon knowing that this will be the task that we have to accomplish. I got a bit of jealous on my other batch mates’ assigned teaching activities.  I was really expecting something that was much more challenging, interesting, and exciting – something that would maybe require us to teach an exercise or any other kind of physical activity, for I thought that we would gain way more experiences and learn way more lessons this way. I deemed our task as “just another class reporting”. 

However, upon completing the task, I realized that it was not that bad after all. As I sat in my chair to listen to my group mate’s “lecture”, I could not help but be in awe of him because he was doing such a great job. He nailed it like he has been teaching for years already! Aside from the fact that he knows his audience very well (making him able to get their attention easily), I think his self-confidence and great efforts to REALLY prepare for this teaching session did the trick. I learned that as long as you know in yourself that you have done your best to be well-prepared for whatever it is that needs to be done, you have nothing to worry about. Just go out there and believe in yourself. If you commit a mistake then let it be. There’s always a room for second chances and improvements.

I have always thought that great teachers are born. This activity (and all of the other PT138 activities) proved that wrong. Effective teaching is not something that you learn in a blink of an eye but it sure is attainable. All you have to do is to start doing something about it NOW.