'The Trick is to Keep Breathing'

In the middle of a stressful week so I’ll have to keep this brief. I just want to wrap up last week’s classes. I’ve been meaning to do this since Friday but things keep getting in the way.

Thursday 22^nd / Friday 23^rd September, 2011

I was able to observe another of KyuYun’s classes on Thursday. This time it was a middle level (ability wise) grade 2 class. Again she spoke primarily in Korean. Very little English was used at all. It was a review lesson for the upcoming midterms. Not only was there little English but the lesson consisted almost entirely of teacher talk. She would occasionally ask closed display questions. To support the lesson she had a PowerPoint and once again used stickers and stamps as incentives. As she spoke mostly Korean in conjunction with the PowerPoint could this be called dual-coding? I don’t think so. I didn’t really have a chance to ask her any questions about it afterwards. I want to ask questions but am wary of doing so. It is quite a sensitive area. I don’t want her to think I am questioning her ability as a teacher. I will think more on this after Saturday’s TESOL class.

The most important element of my Thursdays and Fridays are my 6 grade 3 classes. I have 2 on Thursday and 4 on Friday – the final, challenging hurdle of the week. Friday can be a rollercoaster; the 4 classes are back to back and each class’ response to a lesson can vary dramatically. I have learned to roll with the punches on Fridays. This Friday was no exception.

For grade 3 this week I tried to implement a highly structured lesson plan in the hope it might coral the disparate elements of the class together for a more cohesive lesson. It was not a resounding success.

In the first instance my grade 3 students were mostly impervious to my new small talk method – pair work before questions. It has been a couple of days so I will have to review the tapes in detail but I am fairly sure there was no dramatic improvement to the lesson introductions. Disappointing.

The overall lesson was based around using prepositions in conjunction with ‘There is…’ and ‘There are…’ I had several activities prepared. Some from a really great book I use called ‘Two Way Activities’ by Jill Hadfield (I can email it to anyone who is interested – lots of great lesson ideas). Most classes got through 4 or 5 of the activities I had planned. Unfortunately implementing the structured format was really exhausting. I had to set up, explain and lead the students through each activity. This seemed to involve a lot more teacher talk than I had planned to use. It certainly was not a victory for dialogism in the classroom although some of the pair activities worked well for those students paying attention. I had to cajole, encourage and exhort them on every step of the way. What’s the myth about the man who has to constantly push a boulder up a hill? If I had time I would look it up. Anyway, I feel like that guy – constantly pushing something up hill. One class ends, another starts and I just have to start pushing all over again.

I will not go into the exact details of the lesson here because I might write about it for the Methodology paper.

However, in each class there is always ore group of students who want to engage with the lesson, do the work and have a dialogue with me. It is not necessarily always the best students either. The problem is the class is too atomized. Little groups split off chatting or generally messing around or a couple of students just put their heads down and go to sleep. There are always 2 or 3 students whose English is so low they just aren’t a part of the lesson. There is a tacit understanding with my co-teachers that these kids just miss out. When I give these kids the handouts each week I feel like a fraud because I know they won’t do anything with them I am not going to do anything about it.

I need to wrap this up. One last thing – I asked the head of the English department about the problem I just outlined. In methodology and ICC we have been talking about how culture influences the way people communicate. Well my head teacher’s response was completely that of someone from a collectivist, Confucian, face-saving culture. She was so uncomfortable, so evasive and clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Very briefly, she gave me some very generic, non-specific advice and basically laughed it off – rather nervously. I did not press the issue.

Not had time to think about this in depth. I will think about what to do after Saturday’s TESOL class. (Too much work to do now)