Teaching, Week 2
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2008
1
20
46
Trip End
Sep 04, 2008
Beijing,
China
Saturday, July 26, 2008
It's also been amazing to realize how innate teaching is for me. I have a book I follow, and I no longer spend a long time planning my lessons in advance. I look over the book before class so I can think of interesting examples to explain new vocabulary, but I have a routine now, so the class actually runs more smoothly. Instead of playing as many games to fill the time, I've learned that the students actually need lots of review and reading things once is not satisfactory. Now, we do a lot more repetition and revision, which I think is a better use of my and their time. However, the book has 10 lessons, one per day, and there are three weeks of the camp. Though I'll probably have to clear it with the school's administrators, I'm planning on playing a bunch of games with the students for the last few days of class. Maybe we'll even watch an English movie! I know that some of my favorite days in French class were watching Gerard Depardieu films.
For every delightful teaching moment where it's further revealed to me how much I enjoy working with students, there can also be a difficult situation. My best student wants me to teach her different Instant Messaging lingo like "u r kool," "jk," and "cuz." (Translation for my older readers: "you are cool," "just kidding" and "because.") I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I tried to delicately explain that people my age don't use this type of shorthand but it's ok for teenagers.
On the other hand, I had a Mexican standoff with a student in the beginning of class on Wednesday. I was teaching the students the day's vocabulary and he was fiddling with his electronic dictionary and not paying any attention to me. I asked him to give me his dictionary for the duration of class, explaining that I was the teacher and he would benefit more by listening to me then looking up words in his dictionary, which he can do on his own time at home. The other students volunteered their dictionaries, but he became rigidly stubborn. I hadn't anticipated my request would be such a problem, but he refused to give me his dictionary. The other students were urging him in Chinese to cooperate, but he just got more and more angry. Finally I told him that he had to leave the class. He was wasting our time, and I wouldn't tolerate him disrespecting and disobeying me. After a five minute battle, he left, but I was a little shook up. I still think I did the right thing by asserting my authority because I would have lost control of the class if I'd made an empty threat. Still, I didn't like doing it, and hope I won't have to again anytime soon.
It was actually an important teaching lesson for me because I learned that I can be assertive when I need to and then bounce back to normal to resume class. I also realized that I had to act cool with this student the next day and be mature about the situation. If I'd gotten into a confrontation with a friend, I probably would have held a chip on my shoulder. But as the teacher, it's my job to let the student know he could return to class without feeling ostracized for the rest of the summer camp.
I really do love teaching, and these past two weeks have impressed upon me that this experience will help give me direction as an unemployed college graduate when I go home to the US. While there are still many careers that interest me, maybe I should more seriously consider teaching sooner rather than later.
