‘Aint That a Kick in the Head’

There is a movie being advertised just now called Contagion. You may have seen the posters all over the Seoul subway. In the trailer for the movie lovely Gwyneth Paltrow thinks she has a little jetlag. Turns out she has a deadly new virus with the potential to wipe out human civilisation. Anyway, lovely Gwyneth dies in a very un-flattering, foaming-at-the-lips kind of way and then the rest of the world dies. Well, since about 8pm on Saturday I have been feeling like poor old Gwyneth. Any moment now I am going to keel over and die. Or I could just have the world’s worst case of man-flu.

Regardless, it has totally affected my work at school and for TESOL. Sunday was pretty much spent in bed. Although I did manage to intermittently drag myself from under the duvet and do a little reading. I posted some objectives on the blog. I may have been too ambitious.

However, some goals were progressed and some were thwarted.

Monday, 19^th September- 4 low level grade 1 classes with ImKyuYun (young co-teacher, fresh out of university)

I managed to record one of these classes but I have not had a chance to review it. More importantly however, I also managed to observe one of KyuYun’s solo low-level classes. I asked because I was curious to see how the Korean teachers handled the grape classes. Interestingly she spoke in Korean almost the entire time. She also relies on giving stickers as a form of motivation. I’m going to ask some of the other teachers if I can observe their classes too. I asked KyuYun about two students who were simply not focussed or contributing in any way. Her explanation was that they had no interest in English.

Tuesday, 20^th September – 3 mid level grade 2 classes. 1 grade 3 class.

I did not feel well today. Although totally drained and exhausted I feel I made some really significant, comforting observations.

My first two grade 2 classes were with the new teacher YongYon who just recently transferred from a different school. She is definitely beginning to settle in. She is middle aged and has been teaching for some time. Her style of teaching, as well as classroom management, is markedly different from that of KyuYun who was co-teacher for the 3^rd grade 2 class. More on the difference shortly.

My big observation was how well one of the suggestions from Saturday’s TESOL class worked; pair work before asking direct questions. I implemented this during the small talk at the beginning of class. I wrote 3 questions on the board. I made them repeat each question in choral repetition (Da-ra-ha-say-yo). I gave no examples of answers. Then I told them they had 1 minute to answer the questions. After 1 minute I randomly selected 9 or 10 students from the register and asked them a question. It worked incredibly well. I was so surprised and just so, so happy. And because they were giving good answers with more confidence than usual it was much easier to exploit the ‘F’ turn to ask follow up and elaboration questions. It seems like such a small thing, such a slight change but for me I have to say it felt like a huge step. Tom I will forever be indebted to you for this piece of good advice. How can something so simple change the entire tenor of the beginning of a lesson? Amazing.

I wish I had recorded either of these classes.

There were also important observations to be made from contrasting the effectiveness of YongYon and KyuYun’s co-teaching styles. YongYon stays at the back of the room and never intervenes, or translates unless I signal for her to do so. KyuYun on the other hand follows me around like a shadow translating everything I say. For the first time I was completely aware that the students in KyuYun’s class don’t really pay me any attention at all. I am going to have to ask her to step back in future but I am worried and nervous I will offend her.

My grade 3 class was a nightmare. It was period 7. The last period of the day. I was half dead on my feet. No significant events to report. It ended; I went home, fell asleep before 6pm and didn’t wake until after 6am. I can’t remember the last time I slept for 12 hours.

Today, Wednesday, 21^st September – 4 high level grade 1 classes

Today’s objectives were frustrated by technology. This week I have only been able to have the camera in the afternoon for some reason. When I got it this afternoon both the batteries were dead. Both! I will be lucky if I managed to record more than 2 or 3 minutes of each class. Extremely annoying.

The classes themselves went really well. Thanks in part to the new introduction technique. But also because the grade 1 high level classes are really wonderful classes to teach and this week’s lesson is a lot of fun.

Conclusions

I may be far behind on my TESOL work for the week but I’ve definitely made some progress I’m happy with in school. Even just in terms of observations of things to work on in the future. I’ve been making better use of the IRF structure, used a little less teacher talk, made some useful observations about my co-teachers, re-introduced choral repetition and recorded some classes.

Best of all I made one little change in my small talk at the beginning of class and it significantly improved the tone of my lessons.

Like the man said, aint that a kick in the head.