The morning class started from 10:30 but as usual, two students were 10 mins late for the class. They were too busy and tired to come to the class on time, I believe. One of them selected the most inappropriate story to read in the Monday morning. It was called "Pork chop" and unexpectedly a story about suicide of an old man. Really gross story to start your new week. But we managed to laugh about that as we shared and discussed what would we react to consideration of others in times of grief. All of us agreed that we would prefer to be left alone for a while because absolutely nothing can heal such a deep grief except time.
It was obviously too deep and personal subject to talk about. I should have avoided the story but interestingly it was one of the girls choice. She usually picks pleasant ones but this time she got the darkest one of all. I wonder why she did that. I didn't dare to ask the reason for the story was already heavy enough and I didn't think I could deal with extra heaviness in the class. However, I must ask her the reason later.
Before reading the story, we shared our up-to-date stories from our journals. One of them has been having a personal problems and she feels very sick nowadays. I thought to myself "Oh, what a gloomy Monday morning."
At the end of the class, I managed to talk about something uplifting such as enjoyable activities for each of us. One girl said "Shopping" and the other said, "Theatergoing". The latter one loves Takarazuka, the only women theatrical company. Well, at least, they left the class with smiles on their faces. Phew!
The second class was with three super motivated boys. They are really priceless. One and only challenge was that all of them had difficulties to pick "l" sound such as in cellphone. They tried really hard to catch it and pronounce it. It is really typical obstacles that everyone knows and perhaps every English teacher at school have students practice "l" sound individually in his/her class at least once or twice but I find it unimportant whether they can say it or not at this stage. More importantly, they achieved to make a reasonably understandable sound after a lot of attempts. What a dream team this is!!! I thought to myself "This class is too good to be true."
Tuesday class with three boys is the reality. Sometimes I have to stop and reflect what to do to get full attention from them and keep them interested. Their reaction is instant and direct so that it can be quite severe. In the class, what I planned sometimes doesn't work at all for some reasons and I am sure none of them would tell me what went wrong. They would show me the total boredom. Which is very very normal and healthy and I even appreciate their honesty and respect their pureness. The tuesday class is like a dance with wolves- wild, unpredictable and thus thrilling. With such a class, I can make my personal as well as professional development. In a very different way, it is motivating and inspiring class for me; however, this Monday class is surely my soul savior for almost everything works or they help me to make it work. It can spoil me badly so that I must be careful. Only my fear is to see any disappointments on their faces. Oh how spoiled I am!
No comments:
Post a Comment