Teaching Practice

Teaching Practice (13 ECTS credits)

The purpose of teaching practice

The purpose of teaching practice is to provide the students with an opportunity to apply their pedagogical knowledge and skills in practice. The aim is to enable the student to design, carry out and evaluate the teaching methods of his/her own sector and to cooperate with other parties and students relating to teaching practise. One of the aims is also that the student will be able to understand his/her role in the larger whole of the profession and in the extended operational environment of the school. An important goal is to learn how to develop and advance one’s competence in development.
http://www.oamk.fi/amok/english/vocational_teacher_education/studies/teaching_practice/

Teaching practice, here I come..

It´s finally time to start officially with my teaching practice. First I had a plan that I´ll make the observation part of the practice in OAMK and my teaching part in Haaga-Helia in Helsinki. But plans are just plans and also this original plan changed a bit. As I got a new job and I´m going to start with it in a month I decided to divide my training period in two parts. The observation part I´ll start now and the real teaching part I´ll do in autumn.

I started to find out a suitable teacher contact from OAMK and especially from International Business programme. Accidentally I chose the first name in the list and called Ms. Katja Aalonen. I was lucky to get into contact with such a great teacher who was immediately ready to take me to the lessons.
We planned together that I could do the observation part in March and continue with my teaching part in autumn. I was very happy and excited to get into real lessons again.

Originally I was planning to do my teacher practice abroad but with two kids and a new job it seemed to be a bit too challenging. But I´m sure that doing this practice in international programme and with international students I can get the same great international atmosphere and aspect into my practice.

I´m very happy to start with the teacher training. I´m looking forward to getting great learning experiences and motivation for my own teacher career. You´ll get to know about my experience in next posts.


Here you can find some basic information about the International Business programme:
http://www.oamk.fi/english/studies_and_applying/bachelors_degrees_in_english/degree_programmes/international_business/

Observation part of the teacher practice

Day 1

Lesson: Intercultural skills (2 hours, approx. 20 students)
- Nice atmosphere, students talking a lot with each other before the lesson starts
- Not easy for some students to stop talking and concentrate on the lesson. Some students using quite a lot phones and making own things. Teacher is not paying attention to them. Makes it a bit difficult to follow the lesson and conversation because some students are talking at the same time. Perhaps some break and notice could help..
- Teacher is using quite traditional powerpoint presentation but it´s good that there is only simple pictures and only few comments in the slides.
- Teacher has a lot of own experience about intercultural situations and can use this experience very well in the lesson. Makes the lesson more authentic and encourages students as well to talk about their own experiences.
- Only some active students commenting the content even if everybody has own experience about the things. Perhaps some activating elements could help all students to be more active in the lesson. Now only a few students participate.
- At the end we saw a great video about intercultural skills. No feedback diskussion about the content. Some activating questions before the video could have helped students to follow the video and could have been a great starting point for the conversation after seeing the video.



Lesson: Introduction to Entrepreneurship (2 hours, approx. 30 students)
- Lot of students in the classroom. The atmoshepere is very international.
- An intensive start --- good concentration
- Think about yourself -question is a good start
- Short repeat
- Good examples from teachers, is very enthusiastic
- Assignment -- Nice orientation by the questionnaire
- Teacher encourages to be honest and not thinking and writing what they think that teacher wants to read
- Teacher is very explicit by encouraging students to be honest, brave, concrete ....




Day 2
Lesson: Business and Entrepreneurship (3 hours)


Day 3
Lesson: Introduction to Entrepreneurship (2 hours)

Lesson: Introduction to Entrepreneurship (2 hours)


Day 4
Lesson: Intercultural skills (2 hours)

Lesson: Introduction to Entrepreneurship (2 hours)


Day 5
Lesson: Business and Entrepreneurship (3 hours)

Day 6
Lesson: Business and Entrepreneurship (2 hours)