I’m writing this well after the fact so my memory has dimmed. I think that’s a good thing.

The kids’ class went okay. Based on the success of the previous song I’d brought another body part/action song. In fact, it was Hokey Pokey, and they loved it. The class seemed to go very quickly to me. I didn’t get a chance to get to a fraction of the things I’d wanted.

When I arrived I’d written on the blackboard the name of the unit (Taking Care) as the teacher’s guide suggested. I’d also hung the kids’ drawings from the previous week, with the intent of having each child talk about them, but there wasn’t time.

The workbook is so boring. It just does the same things over and over without the kind of variation I think people need to cement it into their brain. And the context is absent. I was to teach “myself,” “yourself,” etc. That’s a hard concept. What is a self? “Is it a body,” Ricardo asked in Spanish. I said it’s the body, it’s the mind, it’s the whole person. I tried to give a lot of examples of self. Adding to the complexity of the abstract thought was the distinction between the different kinds of selves and when you use them. Three of the children seemed to understand. Two didn’t, and just tried to copy off of someone who did. So I had an inspiration. I’d written on the board I —> myself, we —> ourselves, etc. so that they could see what refers to what. I ripped up some paper and asked the three who got it to write down each word on a different scrap of paper so we could play a memory game, while I tried to give the other two some extra help. I couldn’t really tell if they got it.

What may or may not have been a teaching mistake was when we were playing Memory and I saw the time was running short, so I stopped the game and promised we’d play again next class. They had been totally into it, but I was driven to finish a little more of the chapter because they’re moving more slowly (some of them are, anyway) than expected and the test is coming up soon. So, driven by the big picture, I felt I had to interrupt a good learning moment.

The adult class was really hard. I’d written a lesson plan for that as well, but it seemed sketchy, and when I’d get to parts of what I’d written I would blank out, like “what did I put this here for.” Last week I didn’t use the audio tape that goes with the book because, since they have a native English speaker here, and since they can actually see my mouth move, I thought it would be easier for them to understand. But this week there was a conversation that seemed a little more complex so I decided to try out the tape. Afterwards I asked them: do you like the tape better, or when I read it. The hedged, but it was clear they like the tape more. I’m not sure why, but I’ll go with that.

So the lesson had gaping holes during which I felt I was just standing there slack-jawed, trying to improvise what was next. Part of why that happened, I think, is that the students get through the material very quickly. Yet a few don’t get it. So I haven’t figured out how to keep occupied those who do and help those who don’t. This class is mostly teenaged boys so I’m having some problems with them gabbing. I think I might try to rearranged seating tonight.

The young girl who was in tears last week showed up forty-five minutes late, red-eyed from crying (again). I got the story later from Magdalena. She doesn’t want to be in my class because she can’t understand me. M convinced her parents to make her try two more classes first, because M believes that she’ll get used to my accent. It’s strange. I feel like shit, like I’m doing something wrong, like I’m failing. The others seem to understand me for the most part, and I’m talking relatively slowly and doing a lot of paraphrasing. But the girl’s affective filter is through the roof. And I don’t have the first idea what to do with it. If she were committed and I knew I had the chance to work with her over a stretch, perhaps little b little I could lower it. But she’s already decided she doesn’t like my class and doesn’t want to be there. I don’t know if there’s a way to change that. I am always encouraging and supportive: praise her when she gets the answer right, make her visible and part of the class without putting her on the spot, letting her be silent when she seems to want that. But sometimes she’ll just clam up. She won’t even try. So I feel like a failure, and I’m also angry at her. Who knows why she’s learning English. If it’s something her parents alone want, there’s nothing I can do. But if she wants it, then it pisses me off that she’s giving up upon working with a native speaker. If I confound her to the point that she wants to throw in the towel, she may as well give up on learning English altogether, unless she intends only to read and write in English for some reason. It confuses me and hurts my feelings. At the same time, I am completely understanding of the difficulties and discouragements of learning another language. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, or if her attitude is something I can’t change. Comes down to the motivation question, perhaps.

In that class I had a modified cloze of Tom’s Diner to work on the past tense. I tried an exercise that bombed. I used the edited video of Elka to try to show ways of listening. First I gave complete context — she’s one of my professors, she speaks fast, she’s from Bulgaria, and she’s talking about ___.” They listened. Of course, I have no speakers for my computer so it was hard to hear anyway. Afterwards, they looked perplexed. They really hadn’t understood anything, even with all the content. Then I gave them each a card with a word that she said and asked them to hold it up when they heard it (like an exercise Elizabeth did). The seemed to get that part. But at the end, I didn’t really know what to do. I was trying to “teach them a lesson” rather than have them make the discovery at a gut level. So it was like I was just lecturing: you can listen this way and get this kind of info, or you can listen that way and get that kind of info.” Not the way to do it and I haven’t figured out the right way. One of the problems with the SIT training is that they’re doing the former, so that we understand theoretical underpinnings by example. I’m having a hard time knowing how to transfer that hands-on knowledge to a different form. Luckily I’ve brought lots of books. But my question remains: how do I teach strategies without its being sort of a show. experience and tell sort of thing. The “tell” seems to get lost, and it might even if their language skills weren’t so basic. Is it important to make explicit certain listening strategies, or do we just practice a variety until they internalize them?

I can’t even remember what else I did. I see I have the tendency to be didactic when there’s a particular point I need to get across, and I have to learn how to approach it differently. Another example is in pronunciation. I saw that they all have problems with the English “d.” There’s is much softer, and sounds more like a “t” or disappears altogether. So a lot of time when a Mexican person says something like “I stop at the store today,” they’re actually saying “stopped” but dropping the suffix. I don’t know how to teach phonetics. This seems an important pronunciation issue because it affects meaning as well as general comprehension. I looked online for ways to practice the English “d” and found a cool site for linguists that shows the action inside the mouth. But it was too complex for the students. So I had them repeat various “d” ending words, modeled it, told them to jam their tongue against their teeth, let air build up and then release it. It was sort of funny at times (everyone though so; I made it lighthearted) but I sensed that if I worked with them much longer they’d get embarrassed and discouraged, so I dropped it.

I was so addled by the end, at which time I realized I hadn’t even assigned them homework. I made something up and I don’t even remember what it was.

I have some restabilizing work to do for tonight’s class, and have been preparing rabidly so I don’t wind up in the same clueless and didactic spot I was before. I have a full agenda that I won’t complete, and I’ve tried to insert lots of activities beyond the book.

It hasn’t helped that I have no technical resources there. I can’t print anything either from my computer or from a Flash drive on their computer, so my lesson plans are often on my computer screen. I need to buy CDs to burn so I can play songs with enough volume. And there’s no visual resource. I really wanted to watch the Forrest Gump clip, which is rich, but I can’t. So that’s limiting.