Teaching

I looked at my class as I tend to do just before I start teaching, and noticed a few faces that shouldn't be there. Not unfamiliar faces, but definitely not in the class they were normally in.

One student piped up, "Oh, we didn't have a class so we came to yours."

Yep, that's right. They voluntarily came to my class when they didn't have to be in class at all! It's things like that make me feel all warm inside...

Now I should really point out that what had happened was that students whot normally come to my Friday class had simply come to the Thursday class instead. They're all part of the same group, but split in half for my classes this semester. But still, they didn't have to come and they know they have a repeat class to look forward to this week (they didn't have class with me on Friday due to National Holiday - more of that later), but they still came.

I'm glad things like that happen. They remind that I do like teaching and that generally the students here are nice to teach. It's easy sometimes to get bogged down in the futility of teying to teach a class of 50-odd students (which some of mine are), dealing with dirty classrooms and faulty equipment and trying to motivate the many that simply don't want to be studying English. But at the same time I'm sure I can see improvement and I'm being asked questions more and more these days, which makes me very happy. So what if they laughed uproariously when I recounted tales of dropping my motorbike? (more of that later too!!) At least they were engaged, interesting and listening.

However, students feeling comfortable enough with me to ask questions also has its downsides. After nearly four years of English, I feel that my grasp of grammar is OK, but it's still often a case of knowing what's right but not knowing why. My students often bring exercises from horrendous multiple-choice grammar books asking why one answer is better than another. Sometimes it's even because they disagree with their other teacher's answer... Oh dear. I do my best, but I'm not sure how helpful I am.

The photos are from a talent contest thingy that some of my first year students held the other weekend.