In my previous post, I briefly shared what has been keeping my schedule busy. This post will reveal the mental side of things that kept my thoughts busy throughout the month of December.
Towards the end of November I was thinking about my classes, other English teachers, and the difference between their job and my job. What I believe it comes down to is that there are completely different motivations for students to learn. Teachers at public/private/cram schools get to give out homework and tests, so the kids are motivated to learn so they can receive a good grade. For me, I do not have that luxury of motivating my students to learn by threatening to give them a bad grade. My students are motivated by the pure fact if they are having fun and if they like me. I tend to like this current method better, but it has its challenges. The major difficulty is being able to look back and track how each student is progressing, and which classes are progressing faster.
Throughout my six months of teaching, I have learned what my classes enjoy, and how to make the class fun. But, if you try and base your class purely on enjoyment, and you ignore what you have taught in the past, and where you want to teach in the future, your are doing your students a disservice. At the beginning of December I began thinking more seriously and, designing a more effective way to plan my lessons, so I can better track what I’ve done in each class. The trick I found was the “Notebook Layout View” in Microsoft Word. Instead of creating a new document for each class, I have made one file for each class in the notebook view. Each class has there various speaking exercises, review, textbook, vocabulary things that I review. I have tabs for each section in each file, so that I can turn to the tab and easily look back at what I worked on in each section, which then gives me a better idea of where I’m at in the material, and how much they should know. I add voice notes about each lesson I teach, so that when I come back to plan the following week, I know who did best at what, who wasn’t really focusing very well, and what exercise they were good at, etc. I still do not give out grades, but I can track what I’m teaching them more effectively this way.
For the first couple of weeks, it took about 2 or 3 times as long to plan my lessons because I was trying to modify and think of what would work best. Also, I needed to transfer a lot of lesson info from previous lessons. The fruits of my labor will not really be evident for a little while, being that its hard to get an Idea of progress after 3 lessons. But, since I have changed my lesson plan format, and worked out the little bugs, lesson planning has been much faster, easier and more effective, which I guess you could say is a success. Before this, each lesson had its individual document. Once you get a few weeks into a class, its hard to remember what you taught them, what kind of things you were working on, and as you probably know, its not the most fun fishing through dozens of documents to find a specific piece of information.
Another thing that I have recently realized that as a teacher, it’s not what you teach them, but its how you teach them. I could easily look and think of things they can learn and we could blow through material very quickly. But, I have found that it saves so much energy to think of a few concepts and really make sure that you are clear in your teaching. If I were to teach many new things, it would be like games of connect the dots, but the dots would not be connected, therefore the picture is unclear. But, if I take my time, and help them connect the dots, the picture becomes clearer, and they can remember things better. As I start teaching in this New Year. I look forward seeing how my students progress, and new things that I will learn about teaching English, and sharing God’s love.
Happy New Year Everybody!
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