Taught My First ESL Class Today

A Day At The Beach

I have been observing a teacher friend of mine once a week for about two months now as she teaches regular daytime ESL classes in school. This is a good learning experience for me as I have no formal background in teaching other than some training of coworkers where I used to work. Although, I had taken numerous classes in years past myself, and it's pretty much a standard routine, practical experience is another matter. Anyways, yesterday she said that I should teach today's class. And, I did.

I had taken a bit of time yesterday when she first told me about it to do a quick and dirty lesson plan that I presented to her that she approved. Later that evening back home, I fleshed out the lesson plan a bit as I was wondering if I would have enough material to cover the entire class, or not. The class is a two and a half hour long class. That's quite a bit longer than a regular class that I would be teaching in Korea. In any case, I made sure to have enough material to cover it all. And, I did, too much as it turned out. Time really does fly when doing a class lesson in real-time.

I went in early as is my usual thing and wrote all the things I wanted to write on the blackboard before the start of class. Being prepared for everything is key. It's less stress as everything you need is there already. I started with my own intro, moved on to the materials in the book, had two volunteers come up to the front of the classroom to read the dialogue, and then worked on some of the vocabulary in the book pertaining to the dialogue that was just read. Everything went very smoothly as the interchange of materials presented and class participation by about 90% of the class was excellent. Everyone seemed interested in the lesson so far. It was a class of about 20 students today. Later on during another exercise where participation of the students was required, I noticed a loss of energy in the class and came to the conclusion that the materials from the book was losing their interest. I cut it short about one third of the way into it and gave them a 15 minute break. I think that is key. One has to drop something that is just not working and move on instead of trying to slog through it in the hopes of finishing it. You can always revisit it from another angle on another day. An hour and a half had already passed and it flew on by. Time does fly!

After break, I broke up the class into smaller groups for a group exercise that I had made up and that took up the rest of the class time until the end. Everyone participated in the exercise. But, I felt that perhaps I could have come up with a more interesting exercise as opposed to the one we actually did. It seemed to engage everyone, but I felt it could have been better. The students seemed intent and engaged, though, as I saw a lot of note taking during the entire class. I still had a section of material left that I just did not have time to cover. But, that's alright. Better to have been prepared than to scramble when one runs out of material.

All in all I felt like I did a good job of teaching the class and afterwards my "instructor" reinforced my self evaluation with her evaluation. That was gratifying to hear. I hope I can do as good a job of it while in Korea for my students there. Now, I know some of you might have been wondering if there was any nervousness, or apprehension, on my part during any of this and I have to say with all honesty that there was not a single bit of that from the moment she told me today's class was mine to teach until I finished it. I think that's a good sign that I will be comfortable in my school in Korea, too. Hopefully.