sometimes i practice teaching

I meant to post yesterday’s entry on Monday, but we didn’t have electricity during the day from Monday to Wednesday and the internet is connected to the power, so unfortunately that was a no-go. It’s funny how little you actually need power during the day. I guess my view is a little slanted because my family makes my food, but it really wasn’t a problem at all.

Anywho, I said I’d say more about what practice teaching actually entails so here we go. When we were in Darkhan, they gave us the low-down on how to go about unit planning and team teaching. Stephanie and I were put in a group with a university trainer (UT) and teacher trainer (TT), so my experience is a little different from others’. My TT/UT group members wanted to teach adults to get experience for what their jobs were going to be. I feel like practice teaching isn’t exactly relevant to what I’m going to be doing for the next two years because of that, but either our practice teaching would be slightly irrelevant or theirs would be, so something had to give. Either way, just practicing teaching is good for me because otherwise I’d go in blind and fail. That’s really been my only goal this summer – not failing. I think it’s going pretty well thus far.

Our students mainly consist of our two LCFs, my host sister, and two young girls from Darkhan who came to our site specifically for our class. Their English is incredible, even the 14 year old’s. Sadly they left us and had to go back to Darkhan. There was a feeling of obligation to help them most since they came just for our class, but now we can refocus a little bit and make it less challenging for the beginner students. Either way, it’s been an adventure where I make a fool of myself in the front of a classroom and a bunch of people. Good times.

Luckily there is a light at the end of the tunnel! Yesterday and today Stephanie and I had to de facto solo teach because our partners were in Darkhan for a conference. This is another instance where my experience isn’t entirely realistic because managing 4 adults (our two LCFs, my host sister, and her friend) is considerably different from managing 20 insane 10 year olds by yourself. I watched Caitlin do that on Wednesday and it looked like an awful thing to have to do. But as of Friday (today!) I will have taught 10 lessons which is how many we’re supposed to teach. Which means I’m DONE. Done done done! Practice teaching goes until next Wednesday, but I don’t have to prepare or do anything Tuesday or Wednesday, just observe other classes. I am ridiculously excited.

Side note, you know the movie version of Pride and Prejudice with Kiera Knightly? I watched it this week and I’m convinced that they do something to Mr. Darcy and make him become more attractive throughout the movie. Which makes sense following the book, but am I just imagining it or is it for real? Someone weigh in on this please. My mind goes to weird places when I have little to no conversation skills with almost everyone around me.