Over the last few years, it’s rare that I learn something new when teaching VIPKid. The lessons have become so second nature to me that I don’t actually need to prepare very much. I basically look at the slides of a new lesson and the teacher instructions the night before I teach it. Sometimes the day of, if I have a break. But every once in a while a new course will come along that has a bunch of reading that I haven’t read and I learn something new. That is the case with the book report course. While it is not the best designed course in the VIPKid curriculum and you actually write the book report with the student you’re teaching in the class, there is a lot of reading and it can be really easy to get caught up in the reading yourself rather than focus on teaching the lesson.
I am constantly learning new things with my private students as well. I now have seven and will possibly have up to nine by the end of the year. I am waiting for a student that I currently teach on the VIPKid platform to make the transition to privates with me. His mom is very dissatisfied with the progress that he is making on VIPKid. So we have started talks. I sent her the 21st century reading book because I think that the student can handle it but she disagrees and so I’m currently looking for materials that might be more appropriate for him. But I am very thankful to the parents of a pair of twins who actually gave me all four of the books in Electronic form, as I have been using them not only with her kids, but also with one of their best friends and my own adult students. I am learning quite a bit about many different topics and enjoying the corresponding TED Talks that go along with them. The only thing that I can say is a negative about these books is that it’s hard to find the Ted topics so I have decided to do it every time I teach a new chapter. As a result it’s gonna take me a while to track down all the talks and I hope that I’m able to find all of them. At the end of the month, I’m probably going to start teaching a young man in Ireland, whose mom is a VIPKid teacher as well both English and of all things, Greek. He is a great lover of the Percy Jackson books and has decided that he wants to learn how to pronounce the words in the book correctly. It seems, that some of his friends are also interested so I may have a little class going. We will have to see how that works and of course ,I will dear readers, keep you posted.
Interestingly enough, the last time I taught with Cambly was actually through a reservation for a student who apparently likes the way I teach. She is 14 and wanted to learn about the present progressive tense. After a half an hour of teaching her that tense she proclaimed that it was now clear. That too was a learning experience for me because I was able to learn more about the Cambly platform.
Over in the writing world, tomorrow will mark the first time that we attempt to do a write-in online and I am not sure that it will go very well, as you are aware from another post. Still, I find myself looking forward to the idea of actually reconnecting with my characters even if it’s just for a couple of hours tomorrow night.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always there is more to come.
Inkreadable 