Letters from future student

From a student who loved my lessons

Hi Ms.Yi, thank you for your teaching. I really like your style of teaching, you always introduce a small game related to the content before the start of the lesson, which instantly makes me feel engaged and makes Maths, which I think is a boring subject, very interesting. Your explanations of the lessons are also very clear and logical and you explain the topics in detail. What I liked most was that you accommodated a lot of my stupid questions, which made me feel comfortable enough to ask you questions whenever I wanted to.

From a student who didn't love my lessons

Hi Ms.Yi, I still want to write this letter after so many years to tell you that the experience of taking your Maths class at that time was bad for me. I felt that your style of lecturing was too gentle. You spent a lot of the time talking all about the knowledge points so I got tired very easily. You were too willing to mingle with the students so when some of them had problems you pointed them out to them and they didn't trust you very much, and this kind of atmosphere was brought to me as well.

My reason for writing two such emails is that I hope that in the future my maths classes will be lively and fun so that students can be engaged through mini-games. I also hope that I am a teacher who can always make students feel that I am willing to answer their questions. My concern about becoming a teacher is that in my practicum, I was very gentle with the students and they liked me enough to come and talk to me, and my SA told me that I was more like a big sister to them than a teacher. I am worried about this, I would love for my students to trust me and share their lives and troubles with me, but how to set a good boundary so that students like you and be authoritative at the same time.