Is it important to teach vocabulary?

Certainly, I have little time in my role as a teacher, and it has been my trial and error time. I began to study in 2015, at the same time I began to give English courses, and only last year I had the opportunity to teach the whole year in the public system of my country. I bring this to attention to express how little experience I have as a teacher and how much I still need to learn.
As a language students, I know how important it's to learn vocabulary in order to connect ideas, build sentences, so I always emphasize on new vocabulary. However, in which way do I teach vocabulary? It's a shame to say it but I had to admit that I've been doing it wrong and in an unhelpful way to improve the communication skills of my students. I usually use repetition to teach vocabulary and it always worries me that they learn to identify the word on a flashcard, use realia if possible and also I do translation of the terms, but I never make them to associate ideas, or that they show me with some mimic or using TPR the understanding of a word, I also don't use the words to introduce some synonyms or antonyms, and very rarely I use music for them to learn a vocabulary.
Everything I learn in my Teacher Training is fascinating, it's new, and it makes me see that I have a lot to learn, that there are many techniques that I can apply, but a part of me gets depressed and think how bad I have been giving my classes, how much have I lacked to teach correctly, and also I doubt how little or much my students have learned, because, on top on everything, I used to continue with a class, if after after asking Did you understand? everybody said Yes we did!!!. What a great teacher I am!
Nevertheless, I know that I have to focus on the positive aspects and move forward. Certainly what I have not been doing well is not more than a point of reference to improve it.
After my class with Wendy, I understood that reading is very important in the learning process of vocabulary, that not only  I can use flashcards, I can also use several of the methods mentioned above and something very important is to ask WH questions, to know if students are understanding the vocabulary within a reading or an audio, I can also make them fill in blank with words in a new context for students to analyze and associate, also to use words in sentences. Also words can be taught in chunks or phrases instead of single words.
I know my path to follow it's very long and I need to be patient with my students and more with myself to be able to apply all the new techniques and knowledge that I have been learning here.