Carolina CO3

For my last class observation I went to the library. However, when I got there I was told that the teacher I had set up the observation with had canceled at the last minute. The woman running the program looked at me for a while and then asked if I wanted to actually TEACH the class myself. Under pressure I said yes. Ahhh! Here I was intending on sitting and observing the class and now I was in front of it with no materials, no lesson plan, no idea of how the classes were generally run. The woman gave me a sign up sheet and left. I was officially on my own. I racked my brain and jotted down a few notes and sketched out a quick lesson plan in my notebook and then sat down and took a deep breath. Imagine how intimidated we were teaching our culture class--when we had time to create a lesson plan and knew the students. Now imagine having no preparation and not knowing anyone. Yeah. So I started off by going around the room and introducing ourselves and talking about where were from, how long we had been speaking English, and why we were here in Tallahassee. I ended up having a class of about 9. After that I broke everyone up into pairs and had them talk about where they wanted to be in ten years/what was their life goal. Since there was an uneven number I had to be paired off and wasn't able to go around the room and check on everyone. I gave them all a heads up on how much time they had left to talk and made sure both partners had a chance to talk. After that we went in a circle and told the class what our respective partners' goals were for the next 10 years. Later we discussed problems they had been having in their English studies and went over idioms--a common subject that seems to confuse a lot of English learners. The whole class took about 70 minutes which was as much activities as I could come up with in such a short time (the students said normal classes took about 90 minutes). Though this was one of the most nerve wracking experiences, I am SO glad I got to experience it. I now know what it will be like to teach without notice or supplies!