How to Teach English part 2
Well in Part One, I basically discussed what happens before a class, but I didn’t get into actual teaching. So this entry is dedicated to Why becoming a teacher in a single week has pitfalls.
So how does one teach after five days of training and three days of observing and teaching only seven lessons between these two times? Poorly.
Now I was certainly not a bad teacher. I had the all the parts the lessons needed, they were on time and ran the right length of time, they were probably even interesting to watch. The reason I was doing poorly was because I was in near panic mode while teaching. Luckily students are pretty well prepared to deal with this.
No one is clueless about the fact that their teacher is “fresh off the boat.” So you have a lot of leeway with your quality of lesson for the first couple of weeks. So let me share with you a couple of more humorous mistakes.
First off, the mistake that nearly broke me. I was teaching an intermediate to high-intermediate level class (Encounter for other AEON teachers). I had everything prepared for the lesson. I made it through the warm up, and was doing the introductory exercises for the lesson when an interesting question came up.
“What lesson are we on?”
Hah! I had caught a student who hadn’t prepared for class. I knew the answer, it was 36. However, I did remember I was dealing with Japanese students… you know, the kind of students that tend to be very prepared, and if they are not prepared, the kind that stay very quiet. Before my victory though I decided to take a quick look around the room. Unfortunately everyone else seemed to be in general agreement with the question. I gave my answer much more meekly than originally planned. The hilarious thing was, it was the correct number. We were on that lesson number. However there are two books A & B. I had the wrong book prepared.
It was at that moment I learned the both the feeling of terror and that I was a great teacher. I fled the room in panic, ran to the back room (with confused looks from Manager) and grabbed the right book and CD as fast as possible. I then ran back to my room and declared that everyone had passed the test of knowing we were on the wrong lesson!
We all knew it wasn’t actually a test, but it broke the tension in the room. Better still I managed to teach the correct lesson with only minimal problems. Later that day while talking to Hideki (the Sakae head-teacher) learned that he had done the same thing several times. I was more than a little relieved I had made a common mistake.
The other problem as a new teacher was remembering student names. Nothing is worse than going to pair up students for an activity and drawing multiple blanks. I’ll talk about solutions for that problem in a later post. That is something even seasoned teachers have to deal with. My problem was much worse. I just plain couldn’t get one students name right.
Satomi was not only one of my students, but I had also met her at one of the training lessons at the home school. Now looking at her name, it looks easy to pronounce. It is, very easy. My problem was getting the order right. I drew a complete blank on her name once in class, and then called her Samito later in the same lesson. I blame the fact that this was my first lesson in a different teacher’s room and that that threw me off my game (like I had a game at that point). Had the room I was in had a window I may very well have jumped from it to clear the shame I had generated. You better believe I never got her name wrong again. Luckily that did not cause any problems. She was actually one of the students I was most close to and talked with most often.
So there are two great example of rookie mistakes in my first true week of teaching. I’m sure I’ll be writing about many more and solutions to them.
Hi, I applied to Aeon two days ago and I haven’t received a reply yet. I was wondering how long it took them to contact you after you submitted an application.
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It took just over a week before I heard back. After an interview it would then be about another two weeks to hear about any job offerings.
Hope that helps!
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Thanks for letting me know. By the way, after the initial week of training, do the teachers begin working immediately after that (like the following day)?
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