Reflection#11

Reflection #11 March 31-April 4 This week was very nerve-racking. I got two visits from my practice supervisor Prof. Aníbal. Although the first one did not count, it was still nerve-racking. Not because I wasn’t prepared but because I want to do great. This week’s topic was one of my favorites, poetry. I love poetry; I think it is one of the most artful ways to express your feelings. However, this week was also bittersweet. Although I was giving one of my favorite classes, I had a horrible situation during class that I honestly think I will affect me with the parents and any opportunity I might get to actually work there as a teacher. The week started out great with the topic, I brought many activities to do with the group such as create your own haiku poem, videos about poetry among other activities. After being evaluated by Prof. Aníbal I thought that the worst was over. I could relax a little and focus on the things I should improve. Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. On Thursday I wanted to bring a poetry video I had created for a college project with the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. I thought it could be a good way to have them connect with the subject and even inspire them to do something similar. However, since the video I created I uploaded it to YouTube, thinking it was a good way to share it, I didn’t know the school’s Internet was not blocked. So, when my video finished playing, when the suggestions came out, they were all pornographic suggestions and the worst part was that the students saw it. As soon as I saw I flew to the projector and closed it, so I know it was probably there for like two seconds but they still saw it and it was my fault, because I should not have been so confident about a public website. I felt terrible and I still do. The worst part of it was that on Friday the school was coming after my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Iralys. We both kept trying to explain, from the moment it happened, that her computer was not the problem; it was the name of the poem that made the suggestions appear. After investigating a reason why the suggestions appeared, it turns out that there is a series called the L word that it’s about lesbians, and the protagonist of this series’ name is Annabel Lee. I don’t really know about the series but it turns out it is very popular and since my video is called Annabel Lee, because that is the name of the poem, all of those suggestions came out. On Friday morning, we had a reunion with the director of academic affairs, Mrs. Lomba and Enrique, the man in charge of technology in the school. After listening to them go around in circles with the conversation they were having, I decided to step in and once again explain what Mrs. Iralys kept saying but they were not understanding. After the explanation, they both calmed down. I also told them that I had investigated about it and was told that there is a way to block these suggestions but that I wasn’t sure how to do them. The situation was dissolved and Mrs. Iralys’s name was cleared. Even though this was such a horrible experience, I can say I learned a lot from it. The first thing I learned is that I need to have more malice when it comes to certain aspects of my professional life and second that at the end of the day, no matter where you work or for how long you have worked, your superiors will always be only your superiors and no matter how long you have known each other, business is business and friendship does mix well with business.