On the Up Beat

My posts have been a bit on the depressing side lately, and while I have a lot weighing on my brain, most of the time I try to be a really upbeat, optimistic person. You can’t be a teacher if you are not, if anything, optimistic. (OK, we know and have had a lot of teachers who WEREN’T like that, but in my mind you need to have a lot of enthusiasm to be good.)

I do love my ESL class. I consistently have 10 people every Tuesday night, which is awesome. It is still relatively early in the semester, but the retention rate is looking good, and I feel like people are getting at least a little something out of each class. People are starting to feel comfortable with each other and help out those who seem to be struggling – yay! In fact it is starting to get to the point when there’s a lot of extemporaneous talking going on, which I usually try to diffuse by doing something wacky like yelling out “Yoo hoo! Up front, please!” while using my hands as a megaphone.

I think I’m getting better at designing exercises that allow each person in the class to contribute something. I have several very quiet women in my class who will not say a word otherwise. In learning a language you have to practice speaking it often, and if I don’t structure the exercises correctly, all of the natural talkers (a.k.a. loudmouths) will just jump in with the answers all of the time.

My class also enjoys it when I read a short story aloud at the beginning of class, after which I ask them a series of questions related to the story to test their listening comprehension. I try to choose stories with some sort of simple, humorous twist at the end, to keep interest up. Afterwards, we go around the room and each person in the class reads a paragraph of the story aloud, and I try to minimally correct pronunciation.

Not every class I’ve had gets it, which is frustrating sometimes. Some classes are more receptive to reading aloud than others, depending on the mix of abilities in the class.

The more I do this, the more I am certain that I am destined to be a real teacher in some way, shape or form someday. I just need to figure out how to go about doing that. OK, I already know how to go about doing that, I just need to get my rear in gear and actually do it. That’s the scary part . . . which adds to the weighing on my brain stuff . . . but I will not dwell on that at the moment . . .

Today the sun is shining, there is snow on the ground, winter is here, and, for the moment, all is right with the world . . .