Me, a teacher?

Three days of teaching under my belt. What can I say? I think I feel like a woman. The past few days have been a bit of a roller coaster personally. One thing my classes in education at the university have instilled in me is that all teachers, no matter how well they're prepared, will suck when they start. Therefore the fact that how I was teaching did not measure up to how I thought I should be teaching should not have gotten under my skin. But it did. I think I've come to the realization that my first semester (7 weeks, 14 classes) is going to be rocky. Just prepping new lessons for 4 different levels will keep me busy enough. Then I figure by the time the second semester rolls around there will only be two levels of English that I haven't taught. Figuring out how to teach only two new lessons should give me time enough to go back through all my old lesson plans and add some fun stuff. If this happens the way I think it should (which I'm sure it won't), by the January-February semester, I should have some pretty useful supplemental material to help my students improve their English.

I teach three classes every evening for an hour and a half each. And two short half hour extra English classes (pronunciation, vocabulary, etc.). This week I've needed to be at the office from 13-15 everyday to interview new students who register late. So a typical day for me has me getting up around 8 or 9, planning my lessons until noon, going to the office, and then heading from there straight to school. I'm at the school from about 16-22, and then return home and fall asleep. For those of you astute mathematicians out there, you may notice that I am getting a full 8-10 hours of sleep every night. I think it is the first time since maybe fourth grade when I have had such a healthy sleep schedule. Maybe I need it to cope with the curve ball of being a new teacher.

There is enough material provided in the text books we use for teaching for 5-10 hours each unit. And I'm supposed to do this in 90 minutes. From my own language learning experience, repetition is the key. If I actually expect the people to remember what the word is for lettuce, simply repeating it two or three times isn't quite enough. I think I may find myself trying to cover less of each unit, but more in depth as the semester progresses, at least at the lower levels. For the upper level kids, I will naively assume they can learn new words and new concepts quicker and forge ahead. Although it is common sense, I'll repeat myself again: After going through the material once, I should have a much better feel for what types of things need more emphasis than others.

I'll wrap this entry up with a few miscellaneous facts that just popped into my head. Both of my top level classes (5 and 6) are composed entirely of females. I suppose this shouldn't surprise me, but in a way it does. On the little information card I asked everybody to fill out, a good percentage of the attractive ones shared that they were particularly fond of 'the belly dance'. Maybe that would be a good activity to have at our end of the semester class party (Anastasia - I'm kidding; this activity would be much better suited for a Friday evening vespers). I have seen only two sailors. And they look pretty much like anybody else. I'd say the average age of my students is somewhere around 21, although the range is from maybe 12-40+. I'm curious to see how the more informal Friday evening / Saturday afternoon meetings go. On the little index card that lists all extra English classes, it shows me as running these two events. If I get as much help and guidance as I have thus far, it could be interesting.