First Day of Teaching

Yesterday was my first day of teaching.

They tried to send me to the opposite side of town to teach in an exclusive public school by myself. Me, in a cab to the other side of the city, at least a half hour cab ride, to a place I have never been, to meet up with another TA (teaching assistant) that I had never met. I had to urge my Centre Manager to send a TA with me. It was a good thing that I did because the place was a zoo when I arrived and I would have had no idea where to go.

No one told me what to do with the class. I had no curriculum and no suggestions. I had planned a lesson anyways. Easy introduction stuff and some Canadiana trivia. Know one had told me the ages or levels of these students either. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the students I have are all about to enter high school and are exceptionally good a speaking and writing English. They range from 12 to 15 years old. I have four classes of approximately 28 students, so just over a hundred kids. That's right on my first day of teaching and my first day of class I was given over 100 hundred students to look after. I had a TA provided by the school who disappeared after my first two classes. I suppose she seemed to think I was okay. I was to tell you the truth. The kids were moderately well behaved. The girls and boys would not speak to each other during my group-work activities but that's to be expected at this level. I yelled at them a bit about this lack of boy-girl communication. I also let them have it for not actually doing the activity when I was on the other side of the class. It's always to start off as a bit of a hard-ass so the kids will be a bit intimidated and not try to take over. I think it went well. The only problem I really had was with the youngest group. One of the boys disputed my claim that the USA is larger than China. We were comparing the largest countries in the world Canada 2nd and China 4th. This boy even quoted me the land area in number of square kilometres for China and the US. I told him I would check into it. Truth is mainland China is smaller than the USA. If you add the disputed regions that China claims as theirs then China is bigger than the US. I will leave it as a draw tomorrow but will write China ahead of the USA just for good measure.

I asked the class to select the best boy and best girl for a contest for their next class. With much excitement two students were delivered to the front from each class. Their task is to see who can say the alphabet backwards the fastest without error. I can say it in under 6 seconds easily but this is one of my favourite 'Stupid Human Tricks'. We will see how it goes. I have a course book and a fairly solid plan for tomorrow. I am looking forward to the alphabet game.

I'll keep you posted. I start teaching at my own EF school on Saturday morning with younger much less experienced kids. Good stuff.