The class of twelve was enough for six pairs. I had put them to work ranking things and writing in a few sentences what and why, then trading what they'd written with a partner and discussing each other's thoughts. So, for instance, restaurants: formal, family or fast, which do you prefer and why?
As I walked around the room, stopping to talk with individual writers and then with pairs, I enjoyed the buzz of conversation around me. We wrapped up the class; our work was to be the basis of short essay. I passed out something for reading as people bundled up to leave--then spring happened.
It's been a tough start of term. There was the two successive Tuesday classes canceled because of the storms. In the first classes, I was still logy and coughing persistently as I slowly recovered from the bug that had floored me in mid-January. A mix-up with room assignments meant that some students missed the first couple of classes because in the wrong place. One sat in for a few weeks on a psychology class before realizing his mistake. Several called in sick.
I'm teaching a new higher level so I thought I'd change my normal practice and work with the prescribed books, but they turned out to be awkward at best, stupid at worst, and expensive to boot. Still I had committed to using them and students had invested. Some of the students were ones I'd taught the term before at the previous level, and I was anxious not to repeat anything.
The first couple of classes of any term are get-to-know-you sessions. These, interrupted and irregularly attended, were a bit haphazard. The lessons were unbalanced. I was tense, and so were the students. One student told me as we walked together to the class how hard it was for her to write in English, how only her husband's encouragement kept her coming.
And yet, we've persisted. I've gotten a better handle on what I want to do with both the speaking & listening class early in the evening and the reading & writing classes afterwards, and how I can make use of the books and not vice versa. We've started to get some momentum: some oral presentations, a first essay. The students are starting to feel comfortable with each other, learning each others names, and they're more familiar with me, and I with them.
So, after class, a good class, while I was busily assembling my papers, I thought when a student came up that perhaps she wanted to get clarification on the homework or to say she would be absent. Instead she said she wanted to tell me how she appreciated the class. 'It's working. I'm getting new thoughts. New words are coming.' Her feeling was reinforced, she implied, by watching her partner busily writing. Thank you, she said.
Wow! I had no idea she had been thinking these things. It's a happy class, but usually nobody says anything about the classes or the teaching generally. Still, this term has been so beset and I've felt so beleaguered that these words were like crocuses thrusting their flowers up through the snow--balm to my winter-wounded soul.
Thank you for your words so thoughtfully spoken, and thank you, students, for sticking with the project, giving it your all, and beginning to make progress. You are each special and together special. We're going to have a good term.
As I walked around the room, stopping to talk with individual writers and then with pairs, I enjoyed the buzz of conversation around me. We wrapped up the class; our work was to be the basis of short essay. I passed out something for reading as people bundled up to leave--then spring happened.
It's been a tough start of term. There was the two successive Tuesday classes canceled because of the storms. In the first classes, I was still logy and coughing persistently as I slowly recovered from the bug that had floored me in mid-January. A mix-up with room assignments meant that some students missed the first couple of classes because in the wrong place. One sat in for a few weeks on a psychology class before realizing his mistake. Several called in sick.
I'm teaching a new higher level so I thought I'd change my normal practice and work with the prescribed books, but they turned out to be awkward at best, stupid at worst, and expensive to boot. Still I had committed to using them and students had invested. Some of the students were ones I'd taught the term before at the previous level, and I was anxious not to repeat anything.
The first couple of classes of any term are get-to-know-you sessions. These, interrupted and irregularly attended, were a bit haphazard. The lessons were unbalanced. I was tense, and so were the students. One student told me as we walked together to the class how hard it was for her to write in English, how only her husband's encouragement kept her coming.
And yet, we've persisted. I've gotten a better handle on what I want to do with both the speaking & listening class early in the evening and the reading & writing classes afterwards, and how I can make use of the books and not vice versa. We've started to get some momentum: some oral presentations, a first essay. The students are starting to feel comfortable with each other, learning each others names, and they're more familiar with me, and I with them.
So, after class, a good class, while I was busily assembling my papers, I thought when a student came up that perhaps she wanted to get clarification on the homework or to say she would be absent. Instead she said she wanted to tell me how she appreciated the class. 'It's working. I'm getting new thoughts. New words are coming.' Her feeling was reinforced, she implied, by watching her partner busily writing. Thank you, she said.
Wow! I had no idea she had been thinking these things. It's a happy class, but usually nobody says anything about the classes or the teaching generally. Still, this term has been so beset and I've felt so beleaguered that these words were like crocuses thrusting their flowers up through the snow--balm to my winter-wounded soul.
Thank you for your words so thoughtfully spoken, and thank you, students, for sticking with the project, giving it your all, and beginning to make progress. You are each special and together special. We're going to have a good term.
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