There are many possible obstacles that can arise when planning and developing a teaching sequence. As quality educators, it is essential for us to be able to immediately identify them and provide fair and equitable solutions for our group of students.

 

One of the main challenges that most teachers are willing to cover is the encouragement of all students. A learning cannot occur unless there is a strong motivation behind. We should look for that motivation in each one of our students, so that we can catch their interest and make them passionate about learning and gaining knowledge. Balancing all the different learning needs of students is also a key aspect to achieve for a successful classroom. Every student who walks through the door is different. Some struggle with math and need extra help. Some learn really well when they read the text, and others when they listen to a lecture or when they work the problems out on their own.

 

We could also find some deep behavioral problems in some of our students, and one of the biggest dares is to help them find those encouragements to love learning, support them when needed and, sometimes, finding the base of that dilemma. But always remembering that the students who challenge their teacher the most, do need their teachers the most.

 

Not only do teachers have to ensure that each student in class is learning and engaged as said, but we also have to make sure that we are in line with the goals of the school. Most of the time, that goal is the same: educate students so that when they enter the “real world,” they will be capable of making good choices. Sometimes, though, there are more things going on with the school than any one teacher knows about. Good communication and good planning can help to ensure that students are getting the full educational and social experience of school.

 

Moreover, having the class content taught through CLIL can easily lead to a distorted content understanding and students’ frustration. We should be aware of the challenge size we are posing our students, as we are not only asking them to learn new content for many different areas, but also to learn it through a medium that may or may not be familiar to them. It is for this that some of them can struggle when the results are slower than they expected or when they cannot manage to communicate and express themselves. It is for this, that oral skills’ development become as well a main theme to improve and cover in the CLIL teaching sequences.

 

Teaching can be challenging at times, but as long as you really care about your students and really want to help them, both with the materials in your class and their struggles outside your class, it can also be very rewarding.

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