3/23 another observation

I do not know where I have left you with school, but there are more changes going on. My favorite teacher Sally is leaving Friday to go to a new and improved job. Her replacement that had been training for a week, quit unexpectedly so they are frantically trying to find a new teacher. Until they do Mr. Wi our director will be subbing her classes.

With that, David Wi has also started to observe all of our classes to see how we are doing. He observed one of my classes today. There are 12 people in this class, age 11 or 12 I believe. They are level 4, which means they are still in the beginning stages of the English language, however, they should be a lot farther along than they are. It is a pretty tough class to teach, when all they want to do is sleep or play games because they have been at school all day.

So class began, and I had them do a certain activity where each student has to remember what the previous student said and so on, until the last person has to repeat all of them. Then I went into my normal routine, going through the grammar book, reading book, phonics book, and then dialogue. I thought I did pretty damn good, and was excited to get some good feedback, saying that I am doing a nice job. However, when we met later that evening, I only got constructive criticism and no positive reinforcement, which he is really big on. I have come to accept criticism especially for teaching English because I have never done it before, but some of the information he gave me was contradictory to what Betty told me at my 2 month observation. I am sort of confused to whether to go along with Betty or the owner of the school, but I think I will try his way, which makes sense only if class was a perfect world and everyone gave the same respect and responds to the same thing. I will give it a try because I have nothing to lose and can compare which method works better. The meeting lasted about an hour and appreciated all the feedback he gave me, although I would have loved at least 1 or 2 compliments because I know that class went really well.

Just nod your head and smile!