Teaching Update

Since my last post, I have begun teaching in earnest. In the mornings I teach classes of 5th and 6th graders with my co-teacher. Last week, we began collaborating on lesson plans, with varying success. Our lack of fluency in a common language (she speaks very good, but not perfect English) and my lack of experience in planning lessons has made our task rather difficult. So far, we have done four lessons with each one taking about an hour to plan. I should note that these are only forty minute lessons. In any case, we have managed to insert me into the teaching method.

My other classes are more difficult. At the end of last week, I was told that I would be teaching three classes on my own - two advanced English classes and one class of other teachers at the school. My first teacher class was last Thursday and I - having no real idea how to teach a group of adults English - decided it would be best to wing it, try to figure out what the teachers wanted to learn, and go from there. I bombed. With no idea what to do, I began by asking each of them to tell me their names and goals for the English class. It quickly began to feel like a self-help group with me saying things like "Welcome Mr. Kim, thank you for sharing your goals with us. Would someone else like to speak." I then tried to simulate some conversation, failed, explained some grammer that they were uninterested in learning, then discussed my future "plans" for the class. Needless to say, I am hoping for a better performance tomorrow.

My advanced classes are going much better. I taught both of them alone today and things seemed to go well. I think that these will probably be the classes I enjoy the most each week.