I've always been of the mindset that "you don't become a teacher, you are born a teacher". However, with the pedagogical education received, the coal that comes out of the mine is processed, turned into a unique diamond and valued. It is with this ideology that I wanted to deserve the qualification of an English Teacher, on top of the English Language and Literature Department, which I had mastered in 2015. I wanted to refuse to take the seven-week accelerated pedagogical formation, which in my opinion is of no importance and weight, to read it from beginning to end and not be deprived of any lessons.
Life can open many different doors for you when you least expect it. The important thing is not to close that door back without opening it and seeing what is behind it. Dare to take that step inside. The most beautiful of those doors was Yeditepe English Language Teaching Department for me. When I opened that door, the first person I met was Ayşe Semra Akyel, Dean of Yeditepe Education Faculty, and I never knew that my relationship with Ayşe teacher would bring me to the Education Leadership Program in Finland.
It is quite interesting that the education faculty of Yeditepe University, which is claimed to have a capitalist approach, consisted of idealist teachers. If you were to see this, you had to chat with them, open up and show how you know yourself and fight for your ideals. As a matter of fact, it talks out of both sides of the mouth. Of course, I know many people who have the aim of "I was going to get a diploma and leave" or study in the department with the understanding of "if I do nothing, I will become a teacher".
In addition to the field courses taken jointly with the Department of English Language and Literature and pedagogical courses taken jointly with other teaching departments, the program also included wonderful courses such as English as a Foreign Language, Early English Education, or Material Development in the English Language. The teaching of the lessons varied according to the dynamics of that class, and since we were in a free environment most of the time, when we came with a logical idea, that idea was evaluated and the lesson was taught accordingly. In the last year, your faith was suffering from planning lessons, so much so that there were nights when teacher candidates would compete with our friends and find out who would prepare the best lesson plan.
Of course, there is also the indispensable internship issue. At the end of the third year, the school names given by the students as suggestions were evaluated and if an agreement was reached with the schools - mostly private schools - we were assigned to those schools as interns according to our preferences. Your first semester was spent making observations and preparing a report as a result of the observation, and your last semester was spent preparing a lesson plan suitable for the class of the teacher you were observing and giving lessons in accordance with that lesson plan. I think it was up to the pre-service teacher to make the internship effective. Whether we spend all our time chatting with students, snuggling, or "how would I do it?" We could say and spend it by making a self-evaluation. Of course, the results of these actions were reflected to us as grades and feedback by our assistant professor and university teacher.
As I said, Yeditepe University often gives pedagogical formation. It is possible to get a diploma with the money printed and skipped with compressed courses. Of course, I am not the authority to criticize its quality, but the decision is yours; Is it the field that you want to take pedagogy and education lessons that are digested in four years, or the pedagogy lessons taken in seven weeks at once?
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