• Always model things before expecting students to do it.
• Classes should be: interactive, participatory, communicative.
• Reflect: If you do it well, what was good; if something went awry, why?
• You want each student to leave each class with at least one success.

Tardiness & Homework in Mexico

Tardiness is epidemic. Some ideas to deal with it.

• Always start on time
• First day, evaluate their interests
• Begin class with roll call as time-killer
• Begin each class with a really fun game that they come to anticipate, but that doesn’t cover any crucial grammatical or thematic material
• As students when they prefer to do homework: weekend or weekday
• Avoid use of the word “homework”; call it “follow-up exercise” or something. Rather than “read pages 9 to 11,” try “bring an example of ____ from ____ [the newspaper, etc]. Assign what they love doing anyway, where language objectives are hidden.
• Celebrate what they do right.
• Don’t introduce self as intern
• Tell students why it’s hard when they’re late.
• As a Mexican teacher/s what they do with tardiness
• For homework, assign cumulative projects that have an end goal they want to strive toward, and that become part of each day’s class discussion as well.