My second day of teaching

On the second day of teaching, my true love sent to me... Ok, so maybe I got a little carried away there, but it does feel like I am in the midst of doing a remake of the Twelve Days of Christmas! If I do get all 12 I will be sure to let you know. I wonder if I can keep with the tune as well. (This seems odd coming from someone not so creatively inclined :) )

Anyway, back to the case in hand. My second day, after being severely scarred and scattered by the blood test, went really well. The first class was the first class, but it is tough to really know anything at the moment as I have not taught the first hour by myself yet. Of course they are also my third class, and they were so awesome! They talked, they interacted, they tried to answer the questions! I was so happy...and the time just flew by. I hope I am able to keep material on hand that encourages such behavior.

The second class, while respectful, was not all that excited today. Of course they are the more advanced group, so being forced to study what we were forced to study for this week was not really fun for them. I quickly went over the worksheets we had to do because we are having a "revision exercise" (ie. test) today. Of course, much of the test is not reflective of what we did, but I didn't make it, and there is nothing I can do about it. (We are not allowed to use the word test for this because in the SABIS system, tests are put into databanks and can not be returned to the students. This revision exercise will be handed back for the student to learn from and put in their portfolios.)

As for this revison exercise, I am quite upset by it. It is totally unfair! The questions contain new vocabulary that has never been previously introduced; many of the questions have nothing to do with the last two days of material which is what we said would be on the test; the instructions use terms such as comparative and superlative, and while the students know how to make these structures, they were never told that this is what they were called.

Then there is dictations, which we are suppoed to do at least once a week (I think I want to do it more). The way they have been doing it has been to take a passage that was in one of the readings and dictate that to the students. The students have no idea what it is going to be. This is fine to an extent. The lower level, especially, finds spelling very difficult (duh!) and to expect them to know how to spell every word they come across is ludicrous. So, I shall have to change that. I will give them vocabulary words for every lesson. I will then use some of those to put in a dictation. Then, I will only check to see if they spelled those words correctly (as well as used punctuation and capitaliation correctly because we went over that as well). As long as a word, other than the present or past vocabulary) is spelled so I can read it, I will not take off points because of it (though I will correct it). The other teacher like to use readings to teach many things at the same time (grammar, reading comprehension, etc). This is another thing I must disagree with. I agree you can use it for doing all of those things, but one must do one at a time to teach, more global for assessment. I don't know if there are teachers out there who believe in teaching multiple things at the same time with one tool, but I generally don't . (This person has no teaching background so is doing things by gut feeling. It can work, but is not the best even if what they are doing works.)

I have learned that I am going to be getting phonics books for my class starting next month, and we may also have to teach basic mathematics. They were given a test before classes started for English and Math. These tests were in English (as is everything SABIS does). They didn't do so well. They were retested in Math, this time in Kurdish, to see if it was a language as opposed to a math problem. There math is terrible! The average score was less than 40% on basic arithmatic. So, basic math may soon be in my job discription!

In addition, sometime within the next month, 100 teachers are supposed to be enrolling for teacher training. So, I may also be doing teacher training as well. This would be a great opportunity. I would love to get experience with this as it means that I could then go to get the teacher training certificate and take jobs on a contract basis throughout the year doing teacher training courses. They pay well, last anywhere from one week to one year, and entails more responsibility. At the moment I keep feeling like I am just starting out. I need to get some real teaching experience (such as here) and stick around and learn from it. There is so much opportunity here that I may decide to stay on for much longer than the August end of my contract!