Monday, 10 December
I went to the 8am class at the Beauty Salon to observe Natalie for these are the students that I will be teaching on Tuesday. Only 2 of the 4 showed up so it was a pretty small class and she did well. Afterwards I headed to school for my appointment to get my Tuesday lesson approved and the final write-up for today’s lesson approved. Yeah, not so much. I actually did pretty well on my Tuesday lesson so there were only a couple items that I had to clean up. Unfortunately, today’s lesson was not as good. It was close but still needed work. I finally got the damn thing approved around 1:30 and started busting my butt to get all of the materials ready for I did not start on them yet for the lesson was not approved yet. I drew a map of the Americas and most of Asia to use as the main aide in explaining where the countries that I am using are located. I had already practiced a couple times so it was not so bad – just had to draw it on a large piece of paper now. I then had to put together worksheets, dialogues and such. I finally finished around 4 which gave me about 20 minutes to prep. Yeah.
Side note – I skipped lunch to finish everything and was very grumpy between the lack of food and trying to create two lesson plans at once. My brain was mush and I just could not get the activities to gel. At one point I thought that I had no fracking clue what I was doing and should just stop. I didn’t, but I sure could have for I suck at creating the lesson plans. Luckily I had my computer with me and listened to music the entire time to keep me going.
Overall, the class went alright. It started off great with a good review exercise and then using the map to name the countries and their primary language. The context of my lesson was meeting someone at the airport and asking them where they are from and what language they speak. Unfortunately, I never conveyed the airport theme so when the dialogue came up, some of the students lost focus for they had no idea why I was talking about flying. It also didn’t help that this class was a mix of kids, teens and adults. The kids and adults were good, but the teens started talking a lot. I remember thinking, what would Lex do to shut these kids up for I couldn’t come up with anything very effective. As soon as the class was over, I was relieved and went back to the student lounge to start putting the materials together for tomorrow’s lesson. These were much easier to do (beauty salon themed pictures) but I was there until 8:30 finishing them. In the middle of this, I had my observation review with Lana and she said that overall the lesson was great with a good mix of activities and progression. I just did not set the context or know how to manage the teens. She said that she wished I could teach it again for she thought that it would have been successful. She said that the lesson planning will always be challenging, but I will become more efficient with it. She said that the problems I was having was very minor compared to others that I could be having so this made me feel a little better. She then showed me my grammar test from Friday and I got a 90%. No fracking way!!!! Alright, I guess I will stay another day.
While I was finishing up my materials the cleaning crew came which included one of the ladies two little kids. They walked right up to me and were probably asking me what I was doing. The girl pulled up a seat and watched me for at least 5 minutes doing my crude stick figure drawings of hair cut, trim, extensions, etc. Her brother came over and was saying something that I could not understand. He then made a funny face, so I made one. The mom saw me and busted out laughing. So he and I made a few more faces and then he and his sister went off to wonder.
I got home around 9 and Meilady heated up my dinner for me and I finally ate. Afterwards, I came upstairs and put my lesson for tomorrow together. Now it is time for bed. After tomorrow, I do not teach again until Friday. It will be so nice to not have create another lesson plan so quickly. I am going to start working on it tomorrow, but at least it does not need to be done tomorrow.