Figen, the teacher trainer :)

Last week, I had my first experience as a teacher trainer which I found really very hard. I wore the hat of the teacher trainer, Dilek's was the trainee's and Tony was observing us in this practice.

I was well prepared and ready for the practice. Everything went well according to my plan at first, or I thought so. After 15 minutes, I found myself trying to relax Dilek and make her reflect on her teaching practice, but I knew that I couldn't do that. I realized what the problem was when Tony told us to take a deep breath and start to talk about how we both felt. As my questions "how" questions had turned into "why questions, Dilek started to defend herself and I started to ask more and more and didn't let her reflect. Now, I'm trying to "reflect" on my practice as a teacher trainer. There may be two reasons of this problem. As I saw that I couldn't achieve my aims that I had in this practice, I changed the type of questions I had in my mind. I wanted Dilek to talk about the areas I had in my plan. She started to talk about them, but to me I couldn't make her realize that these areas were the ones to talk about in detail. The second one is I felt that I couldn't make her feel comfortable in this practice. If she had felt more comfortable, she would have reflected the parts that went well in the class more.

I guess I have a looong way to go to become a teacher trainer. I know it is very normal to experience that kind of a problem in the first try. I can't become a teacher trainer overnight and I know practice will make it perfect :)