Maybe I won’t retire this blog after all. It occurs to me that, if I am to practice what I learned at school, this would be the ideal place to “reflect” about my life as a teacher.

I have just finished my third week of teaching in an intensive English program. Too much time has passed already for me to recall details of some of my experiences, but let’s see if I can squeeze out a few overall observations:

Everything I learned has gone out the window when confronted with a real-life, pressed-for-time teaching situation. I had no warning/preparation time before the classes, and leapt into things with a focus on coming up with lesson plans that fulfill the promised content descriptions. Lost have been a clear focus on language objectives — both specific ones, and overall goals. And so pressured have I been on having something to say and do with the students that I’ve neglected to evaluate them sufficiently on an individual basis, think of their individual needs (not to mention determining how I will teach an A-level and B-level the same material differently), or of their culture, affective issues… or any of the things I need to be thinking of. I can’t even remember their names. And assessment is a big problem for me, at every step of the way. Not only that, I’m not accustomed to the need to track each student’s fulfillment of requirements: attendance, in-class participation, punctual and correct homework assignments.

So, basically all the things a teacher must do are off my radar. Just the daily challenge of keeping students engaged with content are what I am able to keep an eye on.

Already bad teaching habits are forming, and I don’t know how to correct them. Most prominently is my tendency to think of the classroom as a cocktail party where I can get away with tossing out a question and having several people answer. They don’t. Either they don’t understand me, or don’t get the concept I’m driving at, or feel too shy or otherwise inhibited from replying in that forum. I know this, yet I continually pose questions to the group at large, and am continually met by profound silence.

I do break people into groups to overcome this, and that helps. But there are times when I want informal discussion, and I don’t know how to achieve that.

Everything I learned (even though I didn’t have to be taught it) about authentic materials is out the window. I’m teaching an intercultural research project class, which is so ideally suited to engaging a student’s individual interests, but I haven’t done that. Partly that’s because I haven’t been given time to prepare, and don’t know the objectives or expectations the school has, and stuff like that. Now that I’m 3/4 of the way through and seeing my students’ total boredom, and yesterday a high absense rate, do I see the missed opportunities. Next time (and there will be a next time: I’ll be teaching two sections of this class next session) I will begin NOT with the usual “what is culture” stuff but with “what are your interests” and try to get the kids to research those. I tried to do that this time, but I think I have to change the emphasis and the existing materials, to try to inspire thinking about personal interests (dancing) rather than general cultural issues (why do people in Davis ride bikes). Don’t know how to pull it off but I have to begin with relevant materials for that class. This one should be fun, and it’s not. Plus, I have not allowed (because of two days off I wasn’t taking into consideration) sufficient time for comfortable completion of the students’ interviews.

I want to finish drinking champagne. So I have to work more with authentic materials, overarching language goals driving content objectives, assessment… Man this is hard. I should write more but I’m at Anna’s and being rude.

I don’t know about this teaching stuff. I feel like that language teaching is not my forte. If any kind of teaching is, which I don’t know, it’s more critical-thinking-y. My students say one thing: that I’m always well-prepared. Perhaps I will be a Real Teacher when I can succeed in leading a classroom when I’m LESS well-prepared.