Teach what you know, learn what you don't

"A mistake is like a gift to the class."

I've been a very giving person this week.

My mid-week lesson was a huge topical shift from the not-so-inspirational-after-all lesson on Monday:

Cooking.

If you just laughed, you probably know me well.

I don't cook. Or rather, I do, I just can't stand to. (But I do like to eat. In the framework of independent living, cooking becomes a rather necessary function at that point.) However, some of my younger students had indicated a real interested in learning "to cook in English." Since Monday's lesson had been so intimidating for them, I thought this might be a nice change. Useful vocabulary and functions, but not hard to learn.

Well, it turns out it is actually quite challenging to learn the objectives of a lesson when you don't complete them.



This time my warm up actually warmed my students up, brought some smiles from their faces and some words from their mouths, and we were off to a good start. The students even chugged along through my home-made worksheets - the entire lesson was, as it were, cooked up by me from scratch. ;)

However, we chugged along a little too slow. Three quarters through the lesson, we were only halfway through the lesson. Yes? With fifteen minutes remaining in my hour, the time I had prescribed for my [brilliant/effective/stunning] fluency activity where the students would show me if they had met the learning objectives or not was about fifteen minutes behind schedule. Just long enough to have to be cut out of the lesson entirely.

With some reluctancy, I realized the lesson was going to remain incomplete. I chunked the final end of the class into one last activity, which provided the students with (real!) popcorn once they could write for me an accurate popcorn recipe with sequential, thorough steps. Semi-success, right?

Well. The popping of the popcorn led to a few of the students - though not all - remaining in the classroom about three to five minutes past my designated stop time. And whoo-whee, my teaching comrade of the night was. not. happy.

With great disdain and apparent frustration, he refused consistently my offers of help to make up for the few minutes of preparation time that I had cost him. The next morning, in evaluations, I knew it was coming. I received some vaguely pleasant remarks, and then the fantastic disclaimer, "Now, I'm going to try to communicate this in a polite manner..."

As my friend Brianna later pointed out, it's like when girls say, "Not to be a bitch..."

But they're about to be a b*tch.

The problem of time had apparently grown overnight. Not only was my peer's disdain and hostility still apparent, but my running over time had now led to other disastrous consequences beyond the context of the lesson (theoretical ones, I assume, as he was still there healthy and whole before my eyes to cast such aspersions). 

Well, I've grown up in my life. Yes, it's true ;) In the process of maturing, I've developed a pretty intuitive response system. It helps save time that you'd rather not spend knocking heads with someone that isn't communicating past an egoistic level. In biblical terms, we just say, "a humble answer turns away wrath."

I looked my colleague right in the eyes and said three things: "I'm glad your lesson went so successfully, I hear what you are saying, and I'm sorry that my lesson went over."

Done, and done. It may not have exactly turned away his wrath -- plenty of condescension remains, but there was nothing else he could say.


And later, it was all worth it. On my way out of my trainer's office later in the day, she called out to me - "Oh Nikki?"


"Yes?"


"I wanted to thank you. You had such a good answer - it was clear that _____ was very involved in the timing of things this morning, and you just took care of it immediately, succintly, and graciously. That's a real skill in this course. Thank you."


Well. I know which person's reaction matters more to me. :)

The rain has been falling in Quito since earlier this night and I'm about to make it my lullaby. Tomorrow I'll be taking another shot at turning an exciting lesson plan into a breakthrough learning experience for my students -

- and if I make more mistakes, I'll have more to learn from.

Either way, we're hopping on a bus to Baños after classes end tomorrow night!

Caution, future updates may include: accounts of bridge jumping, white water rafting, hot springs, bicycling to exotic waterfalls, and maybe even horseback...

:)

(stay tuned!)