Wednesday, November 03, 2010

No resources in the teacher's room...

Observation at school tomorrow morning…uff. The day before my contract terminates, and there is no work for me after that there, so why bother, I wonder? It just means wasting time on a silly lesson plan, which by the way is the same that the teachers had to prepare on the days of the BC inspection – and it’s funny, in a ridiculous way, because there is such a box as the timetable fit, Delta-style…except it’s silly to fill that in, and in total rebel-style, this is what I have written:
“The lesson opens the new unit in the book, having just finished unit 6. (…). In future lessons the focus will be on unit 8 (…)”.
…what else could I have written? It’s a short-term class, the two students who have been here the most have been here for 2 weeks and are leaving this week, so what’s the point?
This conveyor belt teaching style, with lack of extra resources, is very disappointing, and above all depressing: going by the book is boring and dry, especially when it’s a book that seems to focus on teenagers in lots of activities, and crams in grammar and random vocabulary, with silly exercises that are the opposite of memorable. And I can’t really integrate these lessons with anything, which is really sad, because I have no other resources in the teacher’s room, and clearly my own materials are somewhere else. And in any case it seems that the focus here is on a traditional teaching style, with lots of TTT, grammar, exercises, and the like of it. I’m not totally against it, but it feels dry, forced, useless: what’s the point of me explaining a million rules per lesson, and talking for most of the 3 hours we spend together, when I already know the grammar and can use it properly, and don’t need any speaking or listening practice, this being (sort of) my own language? Speak, dammit!

In other news, assignment for LSA4 – reload, is going ok, and with a lot of effort (and headache, backache, and sleepless nights) I will have the necessary materials to test the lesson on Friday. Shame that, as I said, these guys are not really great for speaking and practicing pronunciation… Well, at least I can get an idea of the time, then, and prepare lots of back-up, or simply change it to a 45 minute lesson.
So, back to study now, and two more days before leaving the school…

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