Student of the Month

Tijana - Austria's Next Top Teacher

For our school it is very important to support young talents. Tijana is such a talented person. She is not an English native speaker, but nobody would realize that she isn't. Her language skills are very advanced, so she was even allowed to teach an English lesson. For that reason we agreed on Tijana being "student of the month" and had an interview with her.

I: Hello, Tijana! First of all: Congratulations, you are the student of the month. Are you surprised?

T: A little bit, actually. When I am good at something, I don't really point it out to people that much.

I: Can you introduce yourself? What do we have to know about you?

T: Well, my name is Tijana and I am turning 12 in a couple of days.

I: What are your favourite subjects at school?

T: I like English and Art a lot.

I: How many languages do you speak?

T: I currently only speak three languages: German, English and Serbian. However, I want to learn Spanish in the third grade.

I: Is English your favourite language? Why do you like English?

T: Yes, English is my favourite language. I like it a lot because I think that the language generally sounds better than other languages.

I: You were allowed to teach English at school. How would you describe this experience?

T: It was very nice to interact with other kids like that, from the teachers' perspective.

I: What did the other students say to you afterwards? Did you get positive feedback?

T: Yes, from a couple of kids. But some of them were not that happy, because I also gave bad marks to them because they wanted to disturb the lesson and I told them that this was false.

I: Didn't the other kids listen to you?

T: Most of the time they did, yes. I think they weren't really trying to be ignoring on purpose, sometimes a few of them just got carried away.

I: What is the best thing about teaching?

T: The best thing about teaching is probably having the control and that other people are listening to you.

I: Do you want to work as a teacher in the future?

T: I would like to be a substitute teacher instead of a normal teacher, because then I would be able to work with different kids and I wouldn't have to worry that much about grades.

I: What do you think, why would you be a good teacher?

T: I wouldn't give that much homework, since you are in school to study and you are at home to do other stuff. At home some kids can't really focus, so giving less homework would be better.

I: If you don't become a teacher, what would be other options?

T: I would be interested in becoming a doctor or to work as a nurse.

I: Is there anything left that you want to say?

T: If something embarrassing happens in middle school, in a couple of years you won't even think about it anymore. It will just be an unimportant story of your life.

If you are lucky, Tijana could be the English teacher of your kids in a few years. 😊