Writer's Block

I LOVE YOU, LJ! Hugs and kisses and smooches and cuddles and loooove. *rubs head affectionately on LJ's legs like a cat* I'm sorry I've had to be gone for so long. I didn't mean to be! Can we reconcile? Can we make this work? Can we be a team like we used to? I never abandoned you. Not really. You were always right here in my heart. Awwww...

*cough*

SO. Can you guess my next line? Here we go.....

I've been really busy this semester. I convinced myself to audit a class while taking 3 other classes and in that class that I was auditing I think I did FAR more work than I needed to. Oh, well. In the end it was OK. Finals week starts Monday and then Friday I. WILL. BE. FREEEEEEEEE! Please look forward to it.

Today's post, then, will be about a class that is over NOW. I just finished Practicum. Practicum is the required END BOSS, so to speak, of getting the TESOL degree. Practicum pits you against a number of ESL students with language proficiencies in English ranging from high beginner-low advanced. That is, these students know less English than the students I had taught prior so required real thinking on my part about how to plan lessons for them.

Most of the class was observations. I had to observe the only 12 teachers taking Practicum teach one week of class for these students. I then had to fill out lengthy evaluation forms and write papers discussing what I thought of their teaching methodology and what I thought worked and what didn't work. Once a week we had to give what was called Micro-Teaching demonstrations, where we pick a teaching method and show it off to our class (pretending that the class is our students). But then, finally, my macro teaching week came (the teach the real students week).

Although I only had to teach the students for one week (I was given the task of teaching American Slang and Idioms), I had to prepare my materials for two weeks in advance. I would create an outline of a lesson plan for one day (say Monday), then I would have to send it to my teacher for her comments, corrections and suggestions. All the materials had to not only be effective, but look nice too. I put more week into this week of teaching than I have put into any week of regular teaching I've been doing.

In the end, I created what I hoped would be a really fun lesson plan. Day 1 I would do basic slang they could hear on campus and an overview of what slang IS. Day 2 I decided that I would teach slang terms dealing with school performance. Day 3 was Romantic Slang. Day 4 was Breaking Up.

And it turns out.... THEY REALLY ENJOYED IT. I would see them on campus and they would grinningly come up to me and use the slang that they hard learned. After class, they would thank me for the fun lessons. *_* I was moved. Our teacher observed everyone of us on Thursdays, and for my Thursday she told me "I knew I made the right choice when I picked you to teach slang! You have an energy and enthusiasm that makes classes fun and slang SHOULD be fun! You also have a warm personality that put the students at ease. You have a very good rapport the students. I did not make a mistake, Rhiannon". ; . ; HOW AWESOME IS THAT!?? One of my classmates even asked me if she could have a copy of my materials to teach slang back home in Korea!

You may be wondering what happened to Day 5, Friday? Well....that was my biggest pain. Whoever teaches the last week has to also organize an awards ceremony for the students. The students are given certificates with their language levels written on them and also that tell them what unique characteristic each of the teachers' noticed about them. My professor suggested that I try to make the awards ceremony "like the Oscars", but did not suggest it until the two weeks when I was preparing materials for class! That meant I was SUPER stressed about it because I didn't have time!

I found a red carpet online for $6 so I bought it (professor paid me back and now gets to keep the carpet for the future). I created a script that read like this:


Hostess: Now it is my honor to introduce the next presenter. This teacher always went the extra mile for her students, even bringing food to class when she heard that some of the students had to miss lunch for this class. She also taught us how to stay calm in an emergency with Emergency English. I am pleased to introduce So and So from Tunisia!"

So and So: Thank you, Nameless Hostess! Everyone wants to do their personal best when in a language class, but this student also took the extra time necessary to help her classmates out when they were confused. Her kind smile and willingness to explain hard concepts to her peers makes it pleasure to give her this award. The award for Most Helpful Student goes to Student I still Will Not Name from China!"


Then I asked every student to prepare a speech after telling them to watch videos of the Oscars. The speeches that they gave were ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL. I wish I could have recorded them. They all thanked the teachers, but they also thanked one another and said that they felt sad now that the class was over after they felt that they had learned so much and made so many friends. Two of the students actually teared up a little (which made ME a little weepy too). One of the students even said "I really enjoyed learning English for every occassion" and then turned and smiled sweetly at ME and said "and especially learning the very important American Slang. Now I can understand the language in the hallways at SIU".

I also prepared a "press section" (I know this is cheesy. Professor wanted it to be cheesy. So sue me!). Some of the teachers represented foreign newspapers and asked the students a variety of questions about their time in the class (it's a speaking and listening class! Students HAD to speak, ok??).

I played fanfare when they accepted awards and when the show concluded. And then it was OVER.


Now I have to write two critiques about two more teachers I observed and finish creating my portfolio to turn in. Often we are asked in classes to make porfolios and I always think it's lame. I never care. But this really DOES feel like it's "mine" and I put a lot of work into it.... so I'm actually quite proud of it!

.......until next time- "SEE YA".

HUMOR EDIT That post was kinda sickeningly sweet and self congratulatory. How about I tell you a big mistake that i made that was funny? I attempted to fix a typo in the script that we read at the Awards Ceremony. Originally, I had written "What is your most memory moment". My professor had suggested that the teachers asked to be in the press section be the ones whose English was maybe not the most clear at times. The students had the questions in advanced, so if they couldn't understand the teacher it would be OK.

So...I did the "find and replace" feature in Word. I looked up "memory" and attempted to replace it with "memorable". But apparently...all it did was DELETE the word memory. So at the Awards ceremony students were asked at least 4, maybe 5, times:

"So, what was your most moment?" by the reporters.

.....Most moment? OMG. It seriously took about 4 times before the reporters realized that what they were asking didn't make sense (maybe they thought it was slang?) and changed the error themselves.

So, yeah, teaching and all...THAT was probably MY most moment.

( There was only one way to find out. I wrestled a measure of control that I had earned by practice, by trial of errors, by blood and sweat and tears and a serious, almost fanatical application of compartmentalization. The measure of control that had saved me from reacting to things that I shouldn’t see, hear or feel, the measure of control that had let me maintained the pretense of normality. )

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