18-19.09.07 - The early days of teaching

18.09.07: So I taught at the other location which is also an elementary school. Today was the day that I got my first experience with teaching teenagers...it wasn’t so bad, yet. This group is “advanced” and can all read pretty well and converse pretty fluently. So the problem will be keeping them interested in what we’re talking about. There are only 4 people in the class so it’s hard to get a lot of discussion going. In training we always had classes of at least 6 so we weren’t really prepared for getting smaller groups of people to talk. After class I had about 30 minutes to get ready for my next class (which I had hardly prepared for during the day). This class only has three people but they all seem to be good students. The lesson went really well considering except that I had some trouble clearly explaining grammar points and not getting myself mixed up. It is far too easy to get mixed up when trying to explain anything in English grammar... I had planned on working on my lessons for the next day when I got home but it was already almost eleven and I was very tired so I ended up falling asleep amid the books.

19.07.09: So after my first few days of teaching I realized that really being familiar with the lesson I’m trying to teach is more important than trying to plan out each minute of class, however, I do need to calculate how long I’m going to spend on each part as my lessons today went a little short). I read over my materials several times to figure out exactly what grammar what being taught (tefl books are difficult to understand for a native speaker like me...). I went into the office to find some activities but didn’t find as much as I had hoped. This office is the only place that has all the reference books for teaching but the problem is that it is also the place where teachers go to use the internet, and there are a whopping 4 computers to do this). So it’s often very distracting at this office as can be imagined. I happened to see one of my teacher trainers so I asked her for an activity for teaching the difference between “will” and “going to” (a difference that I never knew existed). She told me about a “great” activity of imagining a party where the students decide that they are “going to” bring something (a “plan”). Then you ask who “will” bring something they didn’t mention (an instantaneous decision). In theory I guess it works... Well, I thought I was mostly prepared for class but it turned out to be a nightmare. I have absolutely no control over the children who will listen for about 3 seconds and then act up in someway. Two of the students I think would be ok but the third student almost always is the initiator. I’d been told to get the secretary if I’m having problems and she will talk to the students. On Monday, before I’d decided to have her come over, she must have heard them so she gave them a talking to (as well as after class in the hall). This day she came over twice... The students would be good for about 2 minutes and then start acting up again. I met the teacher whose room I am using and she had to come in one time during class for something; while she was in the room the students were perfect...so I have to figure out how the Russians discipline the children. After dragging that class out for an hour and a half I had 3 hours before the next class so I went over my lesson several times and went for a walk in the park near the school. For my next class only 3 students showed up so I hope that I hadn’t scared the other 2 away... This class went pretty well, other than not always giving the best directions all the time or not explaining something in an understandable way. We’re supposed to be teaching with “The Communicative Approach” but it is almost impossible when there are only 3 students. For some activities I have paired up with one student but then I can’t “monitor” what the other pair are doing. Once again I hadn’t calculated my time correctly so I started my “Irregular Past Tense Bingo” to early and after playing a few rounds had to return to an earlier grammar point (which I thankfully had another worksheet for). I decided that was really going to work on my next day’s lesson plan when I got home and I actually did read over all the stuff but realized that for my teenagers half of the stuff in the lesson doesn’t apply to them...