‘Of Mice and Men’

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Today was my first day back after the Chuseok holiday. Thursday is my most straightforward day. I only have 3 classes and normally I get some lesson planning and organizing done on Thursdays. My first class was a grade 3 class at 9:55am. The students’ near total exhaustion and the classroom’s painfully slow computer conspired to make this lesson a chore from start to end. I expected the students to be rejuvenated by the holiday but instead they were listless and exhausted. What happened?

When I was chatting to students at the beginning of the class I explicitly used a series of open questions: ‘Tell me about Chuseok’, ‘What did you do for Chuseok?’, ‘What is it like in the countryside?’ I framed most as class wide initiations to reply but some I addressed directly to individual students. They were nonplussed. Sometimes the theory just doesn’t matter. Two students whose English is highly proficient and who are also very lively, amiable kids could barely keep their eyes open. I don’t understand it.

The students’ lethargy wasn’t helped by the technical problems with the computer. I have to teach a ‘Tune In’ part of the textbook for grade 3 this week so I need to use a CD-ROM. The computer makes this a nightmare – it freezes, it crashes and is generally just so excruciatingly slow that is destroys the flow and rhythm of the class.

The rest of the morning was spent lesson planning and doing a little TESOL work. I never feel like I make the best use of my time when I have free periods no matter how much I try. This annoys me. I wish I was more effective or better at organizing myself.

An example of bad organization was provided by my first class of the afternoon; an orange (top level) grade 2 class. This class has so many wonderful, lovely, intelligent, sweet kids. I love the grade 2 orange classes. They are bright, shining examples of well balanced, happy kids who work hard. If I ever have kids of my own I want them to grow up like my grade 2 orange classes. They are so nice to each other, so happy and outgoing that teaching them is more fun than teaching has any right to be. If only they had a NET worthy of them. I arrived at their class only to discover the lesson I intended to give was a lesson I had already given them 3 weeks ago! How did this happen? One, their class 3 weeks ago was cancelled and then un-cancelled at the last minute. A fact I forgot. And two, I am an idiot. So instead we played some games. This was doubly embarrassing because it was a class with my new-ish co-teacher. She will think, rightly, that I am an idiot.

My final class was a grade 3 class who are notoriously loud and difficult. In a different blog or in answer to a reading question I wrote that most of my classes happily follow my lessons or instructions. However, I increasingly feel my grade 3 classes are slipping away from me; they don’t listen, they chat to their friends, they go to sleep, they don’t commit to activities. How can I arrest this slide? When I first started teaching here I used more didactic lesson plans because I was scared of losing control of the room. In recent months I felt my relationship with the students had reached a point where the lessons could be looser and more informal. Under current conditions though neither the students nor I are benefiting from the classroom atmosphere. Something needs to change. Next week I will revert to a more didactic, formal lesson plan for my grade 3 classes.

With that decision made and this blog post nearly finished it is almost time to walk home with my head hung low, defeated by another day.