Teaching: Week 5

This week teaching was pretty boring actually. I sat in the office a lot and did pretty much nothing. The first and second years were having their mid-terms so I didn’t get to teach my first high school class until Thursday, and all but one of my adult classes were cancelled. That class, in itself, warrants its own post, but I’ll include it here as well.

The high school lesson plan was a M.A.S.H. lesson working with the future tense that my friend Glypie G. created. The kids asked each other who’d they marry, what car would they drive, what job would they have, etc. They liked it, but the activity took too long and I didn’t explain it very well. I’m still thinking of using it a later week that’s fuller. I would have had three high school classes this week, but the students had to prepare a presentation for a festival on the weekend, so my Friday afternoon classes were cancelled.

Most of my Advanced Adults ended up showing up on Tuesday because I couldn’t inform them that class was cancelled for the week. I told them that I was very sorry, but we’d have to move our class back. I think some of them may have been disappointed with me or with the school, but I’m not sure. I was worried that they were paying for their lessons and thus were not getting their money’s worth, but I later found out that the lessons are a free service offered by the school to the community at large, and felt better about it then. Still, a month and half without seeing those fine conversants makes me a little sad.

The beginning adult class took me out for lunch on Thursday. The school was still in Midterms, so class was cancelled for the day. We ate samgyeopsal, my favorite Korean dish. This was enjoyable even if we couldn’t really talk to each other a lot.

Beginning Adult class on Friday would have been business as usual. We were going to do a lesson from the text book and then move on to polite expressions. But something unexpected happened.

A man, who will hereafter be described as “The Character”, came to class. His English is probably advanced intermediate level, but he mispronounces things severely and sometimes does not understand how to use a word in a sentence so that the sentence makes sense, so that I can barely understand him most of the time. Well, another student is always welcome, I suppose.

But there is a slight problem with The Character, and that is this: He wants to learn to English through osmosis. In other words, he just wants to talk in class and not learn what I have to teach the class for the day. Thus, he ends up being more of a distraction and occupying more of my time on an individual basis than I would prefer for the classes sake. Besides this, when he does strike up a conversation in class, he is not really listening to what I say. With most students, I repeat back what they say in correct grammar and then they repeat what I just said so they can understand what mistakes they were making. This guy just responds back, “Yes!” to everything I say. He has a superior air about him, and seems to be reticent to learn at the pace the class needs to learn. After all, not everyone is as advanced as he is. (There is one other student in class who is close, perhaps more advanced, but she understands that the others need to work at a slower place.)

Very frustrating, and I fear I may let the frustration get the best of me. If that is the case, I may have to tell him that he needs to “behave” in class, meaning he needs to do the activities along with the rest of us for the sake of the class. If he wants extra work, that’s fine. I’ll give him extra work. But if he insists on being a nuisance we’ll have to work something else out.