On teaching

Me: Hi, how was class this afternoon.
Meredith: It went okay. You?
Me. Fine, but I had to kick a kid out of class.
Meredith: Me too!

Like I already wrote, I really like teaching so far. I am in a unique position as a teacher here because the students' progress is not evaluated and does not count for anything. Therefore, students aren't motivated to pay attention to avoid failure which can be a good or a bad thing. It makes for a more relaxed environment which can mean either a lot of positive energy or trouble, like with my poor student today. Ultimately, he didn't miss a lot of instruction, and it won't affect his grades; I just hope he gets the message that English class is not the place to screw around.

I wrote a few weeks ago about my own progress with French and how I planned to apply my language-learning experience to my teaching adventures. In my teaching notebook I have the following directions written to myself:

Speak slowly.
Be animated.
Be repetitive.
Keep it simple.
Make it fun.

I think I am doing okay with all of those objectives, but it is so hard to tell this early. I am a little disappointed so far because I am technically supposed to speak only English in the classroom (that's the unwritten sixth direction) but it would very difficult to begin at the beginning with a group of eight year olds with what would end up being a 45 minute monologue in English. Even the nine and ten year olds who have had a year or two of English instruction don't have a completely solid grasp of "What's your name?"/"My name is Paige." Today I introduced, "How old are you?" to the class of nine year olds and when they caught on to what the response should have been they all said, "I am neuf years old. So I went through the numbers with them, to which one of them responded, "We already learned the numbers last year through twelve." Then why say neuf years old? I am a little afraid that what I am teaching them this year will be forgotten.

On a more positive note, I have a good story from one of my Monday classes. After I introduce the "What's your name?"/"My name is ____" phrases, I always ask for two volunteers to introduce themselves to each other. I have yet to find a simpler English words to substitute for volunteer so unfortunately that's the term I use reptitively for this and other practice activities. In this particular class, there were two boys named Valentin, and every time I said "I need two volunteers," they thought I was referring just to them, so they'd march without hesitiation to the front of the room every time! When I asked for just one volunteer there was a rush of whispers as they decided just which Valentin would demonstrate this time. This was the same class where I jumped on a desk, and afterward the kids asked me for autographs. Clearly, it was a good time!