Wormy Apple

This summer I taught my first all-by-myself class. I've interned in a classroom before, and subbed for an entire year, and am about to intern in another class... I've been around kids plenty.

But this was the first class I've been in full charge of, from beginning to end. It was an "ESL" class at a Korean community center-cum-cram school. Most of the kids spoke perfect or nearly perfect English, and the parents insisted on tons of tests and the driest material possible.

Sometimes I had to bullshit. Diagramming sentences? We never did that when *I* was in school. Same for some of the random grammar stuff. It seemed as though the entire purpose of the class should have been-- according to the parents, anyway-- to kill any love for or comfort in the English language, for the children. I was desperately uncomfortable with that, and had a hard time making the class valuable in a way I understood (helping the kids stretch their writing and critical reading skills) and valuable in ways the parents understood (teaching them tons of rules). I ended up dreading each class and yearning to get away, BSing through plenty of the middle-- though the kids were wonderful and the subject matter *basically* my life's work.

It felt like I was faking it the whole time. Fake-teaching.

I think the workshop leader I met today is going through the same kinds of motions. Which is why I've already done the homework-- months ago. Why she couldn't, or at least didn't, answer my question near the end of the class. Why she rushed out even though one of the other students obviously didn't understand what we'd been discussing during the session.

I can't count on her "teaching"-- maybe because she doesn't feel like doing it, maybe because she doesn't know how, and definitely because she's crazy condescending towards us. I'll have to figure out how to get the most out of this class, knowing she's just trying to fill the time and collect her checks.

Great that I came to this revelation, I guess. Great to know that she's going to be a cipher. Or at least it will be great once I figure out what to do about it, and how to learn in a class without being "taught."