A student with a teacher's hat on - part 1

Every time I see other people teach, I always wonder about my own teaching style. And I did just that yesterday for the entire period of my Spanish class. Yes, I have decided that it's time to brush up on my rusty-yet-still-there Spanish by taking up an Intermediate class. But since the class was short of students yesterday, I was asked to join the Beginner II class for the day. I was more than happy to do so, since I had little to zero confidence in my ability to say more than "Hola, me llamo Tia." :p

So there I was sitting in a class as a student, listening to the teacher, diligently taking notes, participating in the activities, and doing all the required assignments. But for some reasons, I couldn't stop observing the way the teachers taught (I had a female teacher for the first hour and a male for the second hour). I watched closely how they interacted with us, the students, how they managed the class, how they directed questions and instructions, basically my other half of my brain wanted me to put on my teacher's hat and observe the teachers.

I like to observe other people teach because I know that I could learn from their best (and poor) practices. So yesterday, I took some mental notes of my two teachers and due to my limited brain capacity, I figure that I should write them here.
(Let's just say that the female teacher is Ana, and the male is Manu).

1. First impression matters

Who to blame when students say "I don't like studying!"?

I've been telling many people that I'd like to go back to school one day. There's something about being in school that I miss... But I'm not going to lie, the moment I realize how much work I'd have to do when I start wearing my "student" hat, laziness kicks in--I don't like studying that much... :p

As an adult who has had a taste of school both as a student and as a teacher, I cant agree more with my students when they say that studying is hard! Whenever I said to my parents that things were getting too hard and confusing at school, they always said "Well, if studying is easy, what's there to challenge you? It'll be boring! Life isn't easy, you know... So toughen up!" Ok, just like many wisdom words said by my parents, I agree... Life is hard, and being in school was like being a boot camp to prepare me to face the hardship of life.

What bothers me the most is when I hear students say that they don't like studying! Why do students say this to us?

Where's Superman?

What do you do when you feel helpless?
Cry?
Yell at... the person next to you or the innocent TV?
Sleep till you don't hear the sound of the rooster?
Secretly waiting for Superman to come for a rescue?
Well, when I feel helpless I stare at the ceiling wishing that I had a superpower to teleport--to transport across space and distance instantly (said a dictionary)

This morning I woke up just to see a message from a former student of mine crying out for help because she failed one of her exams which happened to be of the subject that I taught. Had this message been from students I don't know, I probably would care less, but this is from a student who is smart, responsible and cares for her academic performance. I immediately sense that something was wrong...

And everything went downhill from there...