 When a teacher becomes a student, reflecting on your teaching practice. During the second half of my undergraduate career, I had the opportunity to serve as an English language assistant, LA, at the English Language Institute, ELI, at my alma mater, the University of Florida. In this role, I worked with another LA and one faculty member, often a linguistics professor, in leading a class of roughly 15 students every semester. One of the first pieces of information the first professor I worked with gave me was on the importance of assessments at the ELI. Students at the ELI were placed in classes based on their proficiency level in the language, which included evaluations and speaking, listening, reading and writing. The most beginner level students started at level 10, and the most advanced students graduated from the ELI once, they successfully passed level 60. Unfortunately, a common issue at the ELI was, that students had to repeat levels. Upon discovering this, I attempted to understand, why this was a recurring issue among so many students, and what my role, as an LA was to help as many of my students as I possibly could. My surprising discovery. The way in which this transpired was, that I observed this trend among different groups of students, to see if there was a common factor. It was during my observations over time periods that I realized, it was some of the most fluent speakers, who were the ones that were not passing their assessments. I eventually discovered that this was, because these students were still having trouble with comprehension and writing skills. After seeing that, some of my own students needed to repeat levels, I started to reflect on the activities, I was carrying out in my own classes to see, what was helping them, and what was failing to help them with their language weaknesses. For my last level 60 class, I started to implement podcasts, TED talks, music, and news clips, and I found that this challenged the students enough to help them improve their comprehension skills. I am providing this detailed example because I believe it is in these moments that we, as teachers, can learn and find new ways to adapt our teaching techniques and objectives to meet the needs of our students. Once we understand that to succeed in teaching, one must evaluate themselves. Then we will have completed our real responsibility as educators and lifelong learners. Being supervised and assessed. As English language assistants, we were required to undergo quarterly evaluations, in which our supervisor would sit in on our class, while we were teaching. Our supervisor would then schedule a meeting with both LA's, to give us feedback on our teaching. As I think back to that time, I have realized, that some of the most pivotal moments as an English language teacher, were when I would implement the feedback my supervisor gave me into the class. It was in these moments, that I was able to directly witness, how it made a difference for my students in their overall learning experience. To constantly be self evaluating oneself, is not an easy task and at times may be uncomfortable, especially when you realize, you are doing something wrong. Nevertheless, self evaluation through self analysis is vital in a teacher's professional development. From my experience talking to highly experienced teachers in the field, I have learned that there is always going to be room for improvement, no matter what one's qualifications are. Constant self improvement. Just as students who are eagerly pushing themselves to learn a new language, teachers should be constantly and periodically checking in with themselves to see, what areas of their teaching style they can modify. Not only are technical skills important to be self assessed, but also mindset and motivation. A teacher, who is consistent with their reason to want to teach English in the first place, or their why, should revisit their initial intentions, and refocus themselves in order to avoid remaining in a stagnant state. In this type of state, they would no longer be fostering creativity within the classroom, and would not be going above and beyond to help students reach their maximum potential. As teachers, it is important for us to develop the ability to be flexible, and identify differences in student pace and learning practices. I hope in my future experience, I am able to facilitate a student-centered approach, with the understanding that in any given classroom, there are many levels of development, all of which require patience and accommodation to ensure an optimum learning experience. One class might not be identical to the next one, and it is often necessary for teachers to examine their work from previous classes to see, how they can restructure their lesson plans, and overall approach for their own development and their students' development. Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course now and get certified for more opportunities.