Teaching Experience

A few weeks ago we went and visited a Czech school.  John's Czech friend Ondrej set it up for us to go to his childhood school.  The school was huge and beautiful!  There was so much technology.  I have not been in an American public elementary school since I was in school myself...it's amazing how much technology changes the way one teaches and learns.  Smart boards?!  Such technology certainly did not exist when I was in high school, never mind, elementary school.  This experience made me realize how unprepared I feel to teach in a public school.  I have been in the MAT program for about a year, but have yet to step foot into an American public school.  The MAT program recommends students substitute teach, but such an inconsistent schedule is not possible for me and my family responsibilities.  I tried to get in to observe some classes, but logistics in making such things happen for MAT students seem to be nearly impossible or at least extremely confused.  I gave up in April, after repeatedly requesting  information. So I have yet to seen how a middle school operates in the 21st Century.  If it's anything like in the Czech Republic, I'm going to be in real tech trouble!  :)

But back to the purpose of this post, which is to discuss my experience teaching in a Czech school.  We were tasked with teaching a 20-30 minute English as a New Language (ENL) lesson.  It was rather challenging to plan a lesson where we did not know the level of the students or the material that they had previously covered.   Initially, I was quite annoyed that we were planning a lesson with little direction about the students' English knowledge or lessons they were currently learning.  I think for the other NC State students in the program this was a significant problem, I am sure their lessons would have been much stronger if they had this information.  However, for myself, who has been teaching ENL since 2003, it was a great challenge: the goal was to create a successful lesson that would allow for extensive flexibility in language use and comprehension.  We needed to create a lesson that could be led by the students since their knowledge would dictate the course of the lesson.  Therefore the teacher role was simply as a facilitator.

My partner for the project was a woman named Meghan.  We decided to try to appeal to our 5th grade students by incorporating some American and Czech pop cultural icons and sports stars.  Our lesson had three parts, student introductions, pop culture introductions, and a memory game.  The purpose of the student introductions was two-fold; develop a repertoire with the students and to learn their level of English comprehension.  The plan then was to include the pop culture icons and the action verbs to the introduction question game.  This would help make sure all the students were on the same page with the pop-icons and the action verbs (for some it may be review and for others a first lesson) as well as show us the skill level of the students in making sentences for the memory game that followed.  The final piece was a memory game.  We figured if the students ended up knowing nothing...then they would have at least learned a few names and action verbs during our lesson which could be able to apply to the memory game.  At the most basic level, students could at least pick two cards from the memory board and repeat the name and the action verb.  But if the students were further developed in their English language skills, then they would be able to create larger more complex sentences. So we managed to create an entire lesson around our students, without knowing anything about them!  Pretty impressive, I thought.

Teaching Day:  We got a tour of the whole school...and then watched a teacher do a lesson. I noticed two interesting things just before and during the observation.   The teacher whom we observed did not like speaking English in front of us. I noticed he tried to avoid speaking directly with our professor.  It made me smile little because I have seen this in West Africa as well.  Often the English teachers did not want to speak English with me because they knew they did not speak as well as I did.  I understand their feelings, since I hate speaking with French speakers for the same reasons. But I imagine it is doubly stressful since they are teaching English. The second thing I noticed was during the observation; there were striking similarities in the structure of the lesson and flow of the class compared to ENL classes in West Africa and the USA.  I was comforted to be apart of this familiar flow while in an otherwise unfamiliar environment.

After observing one class, it was our turn to teach.   We split the class in two-halves with Jennifer and Emily's group in the back of the room and mine and Meghan's in the front.  Our group came to the front of the room and we stood in a circle to begin the introductions.  I wish I had taken the time to move the desks so we could have all sat on the floor and made the experience a little more relaxed for the students.  It would have made it easier to ensure everyone was included, as our circle was more oblong which left some students a little out of the swing of the introduction game.  I call it a game because it is supposed to be fast moving and fun.  I used to do this in Benin every morning to open the class.  Anyway, I ask one person their name, they tell me in a full sentence, then I pop to another person, then another , and another in random order.  Then I ask the student who answered question to ask another student the same question.Once all the students have been introduced we begin to ask other random questions, such as "How are you?", "Where is the door?", "How many windows are there?", etc...  It was after this session that Meghan added the pop icons and verbs to the game.   During Meghan's lesson it was evident to she and I that the students knew the verbs and icons...so we were good with our memory game.  We decided to split the group into two groups of about 5 students, so everyone could get enough "play time".

In none of the lessons do I explain to the students what we are going to do because they are not likely to understand a lot of my words.  Even if they do technically know the words, my accent will make it difficult for them to follow long sentences, at least in the short time we had with them.  So that is why I do not describe much in the way of actual directions given during the introduction game or the memory game.  I led the students by modeling the behavior a few times, before I asked anyone of them to model it.  This works well as long as the students feel comfortable in their environment, trust the teacher to not embarrass them, and trust that the teacher will make sure they all understand before placing high demands upon them.  In this situation we did not have the luxury of building a strong level of comfort or trust with our students.  During the introduction game, it seemed like most of the students were relatively comfortable once the flow of the game began.  But there were some points of struggle in the very beginning and the oblong circle did not help things.

Then again, I could tell the students in my group were confused by the separation into the  two small groups. Their nervousness was evident.  But once the memory cards were laid out and I modeled the game by picking up two pairs and making a sentence with the words.  The students all started to say to each other, "ah, exercise...exercise."  It was cute.  I said, "yes  exercise"...had I known that they knew that terminology, I would have used it earlier so as to keep their nervousness at bay.

Since the students were good with making sentences, I bumped up the exercise difficulty by having them make sentences with the false pairs, such as  "Jay-Z is a model".  The students would then say True or False, which they also seemed to know pretty well.  There were a few instances where the students had questions about grammar.  Specifically with the omission of "a" in sentences.  I had given my pen away earlier in the day and so I had no way of explaining it to them.  I had to run around to get pen and paper.  In the future I would make sure I had both of these...even the simplest games are opportunities to fine tune skills.  I needed to be better prepared.

In all I think the day and the lesson went well.  I really enjoyed being back in a classroom and working with young people.