October 4, 2010

  • Learning Teaching

    Wow, what a lovely outlook this book gives! Recommended as post-CELTA reading (I actually read it first as pre-CELTA reading and have just skim read it a second time), this book is really useful, but this section just made me laugh....

    Teaching English can be very exciting, but at 3.30 on a Monday afternoon, with a whole term ahead of you, it can seem like a lot of other things, too.
    For the first two years or so in the profession, the demands of getting to grips with subject matter, technique, organisation, school politics, not to mention students, can be very stressful and tiring, and it may often feel as if you stand no chance at all of winning through. Ideals and enthusiasm that you started with may fade away as it becomes clear that you can't make every lesson perfect, that some students, some classes simply won't like what you do. And there are the days when you may have to struggle just to get through.
    As time goes on, you will probably find that you have more experience to lean on, more tried-and-tested lessons in the bag to recycle endlessly. Then boredom and staleness are the dangers, once the challenge of becoming competent has faded... the question becomes not "How can I survive?" but "How can I keep moving forward?"...
    (J. Scrivener, Learning Teaching, Macmillan 2005, p375) 

    Wonderful!! 

    I had another first lesson today, with two female students in their early 30s. It went well and I enjoyed it. So far I have enjoyed every lesson I've done, and like all my students... the challenge is managing to organise myself so that having so many different courses all together doesn't kill me! Busy busy busy!! 
    Tomorrow I have my first lesson with another one-to-one student and my first lesson with an Intermediate B1 group course. I observed that group last week and think they should be okay! Nice slow start to the week, building up to the hell that is going to be Friday!!!  

    In other news, it's been raining torrentially for the past 2 hours. Turns out that Friuli-Venezia Giulia is famously the most rainy region in Italy! Well I'll feel at home then (according to all the Italians!) winky