No. 3

A work of art from a student named Peter.

Date: Sept. 20, 2015

Status: Pretending to know how to teach

              At Shane English School, I’m just a teacher in training. Soon I’ll be taking over Suzy’s classes as a full-fledged foreign teacher. It’s exciting and nerve-wracking to realize that in the future, those students will communicate with another English-speaker, and my voice will come to their minds as they search for the right words.

              The curriculum is fairly straightforward. Teach this vocabulary when the students reach this week, and near the end of the course, prepare the students for a presentation so they can show off their abilities to their parents. Use the flashcards, play the games, do the bookwork.
              Having shadowed a handful of Suzy’s classes, I told her yesterday, “I feel like I’ve trained a lot already. First I went to college for writing, then I went to Oxford Seminars to get my TESOL certificate, and now I’m sitting and taking notes on everyone’s classes here. I want to teach already!”
              Suzy, being an amiable Canadian, told me to write a lesson plan for her elementary class for today. I began to write out a plan for a class I’d never met. Suddenly, I realized how little I knew. It seemed easy enough to go up there and lead the students in a few drills and games that follow the structure prescribed by Shane English headquarters, but…
              What had the class already learned?
              What did they struggle with?
              Which students tended to act out and how?
              Would they be able to follow English directions?
              What rewards and consequences would they respond to?
              These were just a few of the questions that came to my mind as soon as I sat down with the target vocabulary and a blank lesson plan form.­ When the form was filled out, I saw I had an open-ended and dry plan.

              Suzy and I discussed the upcoming class over pizza at the local mall—my first cheese since my arrival in China.
              “I’m not sure how well it will work,” I said of my lesson plan. “I don’t know the class at all, and I mean, well…ok, can you just look at it?” I pulled the sheet out of my bag.
              Suzy skimmed it. “Well, the musical chairs game won’t work. They’ll have the big chairs, and there are too many students. It just wouldn’t be practical.”

              
              Soon it was time for class. Suzy warmed up the kids with some review and introduced me. Then it was my turn to review vocabulary from a lesson I had not taught with kids I had never seen before. I set them up for my activity, helping a group of three kids get in position to act out a simple introduction. I walked them through an example, but when I prompted the first girl to ask, “Who’s this?” she only stared at me with big round eyes, clasping her hands around the blue frills of her dress.
              “Go on. Ask, ‘Who’s this?’” I said, gesturing. When the scene failed to unfold, I turned to Suzy for help. “How do you get them to talk?”
              Suzy shrugged. “I think they’re just nervous because you’re new.”
              I nodded and pasted on a smile. With a few more gestures and prompts, we made it through the scene, and I asked three more students to come up and practice another set of introductions. One boy was very quiet, and I dramatically held my hand to my ear and yelled, “What!?”
              “This is my grandmother,” he whispered, staring at the grandmother flashcard.
              “What!?”
              “This is my grandmother.”
              “WHAT!?”
              “THIS IS MY GRANDMOTHER!” The little boy came right up to my ear and yelled at the top of his lungs.
              Pretending that I had not just suffered permanent hearing loss, I threw my hands up and yelled, “Ohhhhhh, yeahhhhh! I see!” The entire class laughed, and after that, I had no issues getting them to speak.

              In America, I really enjoyed my introvert time: a time to be alone and regain the energy lost from social interactions throughout the day. In China, I will really enjoy my introvert time. I may never speak to a soul outside of school just to keep my energy intact for the sake of teaching all those wonderful children.