Talking with the students of ESFM Juan Misael Saracho, we realized that the professional practices they do are not usually an easy task and that one of the main questions they ask themselves when facing this challenge, especially in the last years of training, is How am I going to teach?
In order for students to graduate as teachers, year after year they must complete their IEPC-PEC, which is the community educational practice required of them as a professional practice and which increases in degree of difficulty each year. Thus, students travel to communities or carry out these pedagogical and research activities in nearby educational units every year. From the fourth year onwards, their practices are more challenging since many times they take full charge of students from public schools and face the challenge of teaching face to face and alone.
Thus, when talking to students, we hear about their fears, confusions, and other situations that happen to them when, far from their teachers and family, they have to face a classroom full of students who look at them asking for more. Many of them also indicate that having the materials prepared and knowing in detail how they will develop their classes is what allows them to take this step more confidently, and it is precisely these two aspects that we work on in our training and support sessions.
Knowing that at this point Alma is contributing to students taking more accurate knowledge, completed materials, and pedagogical strategies that we know work very well in the classroom into practice, really comforts us, even more so because the students themselves are the ones who tell us how what they learned with Alma was a great lifesaver in those moments of fear and insecurity. That is why I am sure that with our actions we are in some way contributing to training better teachers for our department.
By: Milena Blacudt Montes
ESFM-Tarija Consultant
Student Shirley Sunagua developing her practice class.
4th year of training, specializing in musical education.
