Classroom management is extremely easy when you only have one or two students. If those students are adults, management is dreamlike in its simplicity. In the first place, a couple of students will listen to the teacher and perform tasks easily. There can be a lot of humor involved in the classroom as with my two real estate executives. They are coming back to me in September for a further 15 hours. I guess I’m doing something right with them. A little bit more of a challenge for me is classroom management when it’s more than a few students. I haven’t been in a classroom with 10 students in a while. In fact, the last time I was in a classroom, was when I was doing my CELTA. I am a little bit afraid of trying to manage a classroom, because as funny as adults can be, and as conversational as the class can be, it’s still a classroom and you still need to deal with people. The solution is to watch how other people do it. And that’s what’s in the works for next week.
I am also finding it difficult to manage my schedule still. I have had a couple of unexpected teaching gigs as people are looking for work and need help with interview skills. I have discovered that it’s quite difficult to do interview role-plays via Skype. At least, difficult while you are sitting at a bookstore during Writers Group. That was the situation last Thursday with Janice. I had seen her on Wednesday evening for the Amsterdam language café and she asked me if I could help her with an interview the following day. The challenge is that at the bookstore I cannot connect to their Internet. I haven’t been able to in two weeks. So I’ve had to use my hotspot to actually teach from. While there was no tech issue teaching, I found it very challenging and difficult not to be stressed out by the situation. If it happens again I’m going to have to figure something out.
I also might have a new student, through the language café as well. But as with private teaching, it’s never a guarantee. This was exemplified as well at TEC this week. I was supposed to go to the Hague on the 19th and 20th of the month to teach a four hour intensive along with another teacher. But the student never got back to TEC. Which I find is a shame. I have a few friends in the Hague but I would love to go see. Teaching a four hour intensive until the afternoon would’ve been the perfect excuse to stay in the Hague a little bit and see my friends. But it was not to be. Instead, I will be going to Amestelveen to teach two students.
I am also teaching another French speaker. I love teaching French speakers. It gives me a chance to practice my French but also I can teach them in their language and they seem to appreciate being given the corresponding French for the points I am teaching.
Finally, I did manage to get some writing done before I had to teach Janice on Thursday evening. It wasn’t much. But I am finding that the upside to not having Internet in the Writers Group is that I can get more writing done and it is of a better quality. I once saw a graph on Facebook that was a pie chart showing that 99% of rating was goofing off on Internet and one percent was actually writing. So true, Internet, so true.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But, stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 