Hello all, TGIF!
Let me preface this by stating a simple philosophy that I will be following from henceforth:
If anyone ever utters the statement, "Those who can't do, teach," or in any way implies that teachers are not as talented/intellectually gifted/hardworking as the average professional, I will punch them.
Secondly, I would like to issue an open letter to all my past teachers. To the good teachers, I appreciated you before, but I appreciate you even more now. To the bad teachers, you still were bad teachers, but I'm sorry for assuming that meant you were mentally challenged/lazy.
Teaching is hard.
As you can probably tell, this last week has been interesting.
So, after the most awesome/most tiring weekend ever, I fell headfirst into my first week of teaching.
This would be my schedule:
Monday: 2nd yr speaking (class 1) 7:00-8:30 am
Tuesday: 2nd year listening (class 1) 8:30-10:00 am, Vietnamese class 10:00-11:30 am
Wednesday: 2nd yr speaking (class 2) 7:00-8:30 am, 3rd yr speaking 9:00-10:30 am
Thursday: 3rd yr speaking 8:00-9:30 am
Friday: 2nd yr listening (class 2) 8:00-9:30 am, Vietnamese class 9:30-10:00 am
So, i didn't have any class on Monday, because we had the day off, but otherwise this is my schedule for at least the next month.
As you can see, all these classes are in the morning, which is super fun because I am not a morning person at all. However, if it means not teaching class in the afternoon in the heat, totally okay with that.
For all of these classes a different teacher would be supervising me. Each class had their own curriculum that I would be following, but I was also instructed to take liberties with the material, and do whatever it took to make the best lesson possible.
I would also be leading two English clubs, one for students and one for faculty. The club for students meets on Wednesday from 6:00-8:00 pm and the club for teachers on Thursday from 5:30-7:30 pm. These English clubs are entirely optional, and they provide an opportunity for people to practice their English and to learn more about American culture. So, i knew what I was going to be doing, and I went into the first week fairly confident.
The first class on Tuesday was rough, not going to lie.
I had been told throughout the week that my students were passive, and did not feel confident speaking up. Given that I was a new teacher, and thus relatively unable to prompt people into speaking, I decided that my best course would be to speak as much as possible, thus limiting my reliance on students' speaking.
This was a mistake. An hour and a half of lecturing at 30 blank staring faces left me completely exhausted and having only conveyed a fraction of the information I wanted to. That experience convinced me that I needed to reevaluate my lesson plans.
And my teaching style.
And my enthusiasm for education in general.
And my life choices.
It felt pretty rough, is what I'm getting at.
The good news is, Wednesday went a lot better. I came in planning to get my students speaking if it was the death of me, because another class like Tuesday's would probably actually kill me.
I came into class, a 2nd year student speaking class, and I just came with a bunch of introduction games to get people speaking. It worked so well. Once the students started speaking to each other I could just sit back and watch them practice their beautiful English skills. Then my next class was a 3rd year listening class, and I focused much more on beginning the listening exercise with different speaking activities to get the students warmed up. Class went very well, and I was able to introduce the structure of "x book by y author" to the class.
Wednesday night was also the first night of English Club for students. We went through a round of introductions, and the students were so enthusiastic about speaking English that I could probably have just let them speak for the entire two hours. We introduced some vocabulary about back to school, and then let the students roll with it.
I went to bed on Wednesday feeling like I might actually have a chance at being a decent teacher.
Thursday went very well, I adopted an exercise from their curriculum and modified it so it would be Vietnam-specific. The exercise was putting together an advertisement describing a vacation to a foreign country, and my students put together some amazing advertisements.
Teacher's English club also went very well. One of the teachers who I play soccer with all the time, Mr. Tung, came to the club despite having very poor English ability. Later I found out that he didn't go to English club last year despite the cajoling of his colleagues, and he is presumably attending the club because he enjoys playing soccer with me. I was quite flattered to hear that, and I really hope he keeps coming.
On Friday I would be teaching a second class the same lesson I screwed up epically on Tuesday. This time I got the students speaking early, introduced some more advanced conversations for them and finished by having them have lengthy conversations with each other. Redemption!
That evening, I asked Mr. Hoang to show me a local watering hole, and he took me to a very nice restaurant attached to a local hotel, where a pitcher of cheap beer costs $1.50. Mr. Duy, the vice-Dean of the Humanities department, was kind enough to join us.
Let me preface this by stating a simple philosophy that I will be following from henceforth:
If anyone ever utters the statement, "Those who can't do, teach," or in any way implies that teachers are not as talented/intellectually gifted/hardworking as the average professional, I will punch them.
Secondly, I would like to issue an open letter to all my past teachers. To the good teachers, I appreciated you before, but I appreciate you even more now. To the bad teachers, you still were bad teachers, but I'm sorry for assuming that meant you were mentally challenged/lazy.
Teaching is hard.
As you can probably tell, this last week has been interesting.
So, after the most awesome/most tiring weekend ever, I fell headfirst into my first week of teaching.
This would be my schedule:
Monday: 2nd yr speaking (class 1) 7:00-8:30 am
Tuesday: 2nd year listening (class 1) 8:30-10:00 am, Vietnamese class 10:00-11:30 am
Wednesday: 2nd yr speaking (class 2) 7:00-8:30 am, 3rd yr speaking 9:00-10:30 am
Thursday: 3rd yr speaking 8:00-9:30 am
Friday: 2nd yr listening (class 2) 8:00-9:30 am, Vietnamese class 9:30-10:00 am
So, i didn't have any class on Monday, because we had the day off, but otherwise this is my schedule for at least the next month.
As you can see, all these classes are in the morning, which is super fun because I am not a morning person at all. However, if it means not teaching class in the afternoon in the heat, totally okay with that.
For all of these classes a different teacher would be supervising me. Each class had their own curriculum that I would be following, but I was also instructed to take liberties with the material, and do whatever it took to make the best lesson possible.
I would also be leading two English clubs, one for students and one for faculty. The club for students meets on Wednesday from 6:00-8:00 pm and the club for teachers on Thursday from 5:30-7:30 pm. These English clubs are entirely optional, and they provide an opportunity for people to practice their English and to learn more about American culture. So, i knew what I was going to be doing, and I went into the first week fairly confident.
The first class on Tuesday was rough, not going to lie.
I had been told throughout the week that my students were passive, and did not feel confident speaking up. Given that I was a new teacher, and thus relatively unable to prompt people into speaking, I decided that my best course would be to speak as much as possible, thus limiting my reliance on students' speaking.
This was a mistake. An hour and a half of lecturing at 30 blank staring faces left me completely exhausted and having only conveyed a fraction of the information I wanted to. That experience convinced me that I needed to reevaluate my lesson plans.
And my teaching style.
And my enthusiasm for education in general.
And my life choices.
It felt pretty rough, is what I'm getting at.
The good news is, Wednesday went a lot better. I came in planning to get my students speaking if it was the death of me, because another class like Tuesday's would probably actually kill me.
I came into class, a 2nd year student speaking class, and I just came with a bunch of introduction games to get people speaking. It worked so well. Once the students started speaking to each other I could just sit back and watch them practice their beautiful English skills. Then my next class was a 3rd year listening class, and I focused much more on beginning the listening exercise with different speaking activities to get the students warmed up. Class went very well, and I was able to introduce the structure of "x book by y author" to the class.
Wednesday night was also the first night of English Club for students. We went through a round of introductions, and the students were so enthusiastic about speaking English that I could probably have just let them speak for the entire two hours. We introduced some vocabulary about back to school, and then let the students roll with it.
I went to bed on Wednesday feeling like I might actually have a chance at being a decent teacher.
Thursday went very well, I adopted an exercise from their curriculum and modified it so it would be Vietnam-specific. The exercise was putting together an advertisement describing a vacation to a foreign country, and my students put together some amazing advertisements.
Teacher's English club also went very well. One of the teachers who I play soccer with all the time, Mr. Tung, came to the club despite having very poor English ability. Later I found out that he didn't go to English club last year despite the cajoling of his colleagues, and he is presumably attending the club because he enjoys playing soccer with me. I was quite flattered to hear that, and I really hope he keeps coming.
On Friday I would be teaching a second class the same lesson I screwed up epically on Tuesday. This time I got the students speaking early, introduced some more advanced conversations for them and finished by having them have lengthy conversations with each other. Redemption!
That evening, I asked Mr. Hoang to show me a local watering hole, and he took me to a very nice restaurant attached to a local hotel, where a pitcher of cheap beer costs $1.50. Mr. Duy, the vice-Dean of the Humanities department, was kind enough to join us.
At the restaurant with Mr. Duy
So, an exhausting and fun-filled weekend. I think it was a good experience overall for me, and I know what I have to improve on as a teacher. I feel a bit bad for my first class, forced to be guinea pigs, but I hope I can make it up to them in future classes.
This weekend should be pretty sedate for me, last weekend was so exhausting that I need to take the foot off the gas for a bit and just chill in Bến Tre for a while. Work on some lesson plans, get some writing done maybe. The room around me is slowly starting to take shape as I begin to settle in here, it's quite nice to feel like you're putting down roots.
Okay, off to bed, and thanks for reading!
Oh, and I know there weren't that many pictures in this post, so here, have a puppy:
Peace,
Jefferson
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