My First Class

I taught my first class today!

Although we have had only three days of the TEFL course, the trainers like the "just-throw-em-in-there-and-see-what-happens" approach. So today at 1:30 pm my trainer, Jane, gave me a lesson plan and told me that I had until 4:00 pm to read through it, plan it out and be ready to teach it.

The lesson plan aimed at teaching 'telling the time' and phrases of 'daily routine activities' such as eating lunch. It needed to be 45 minutes long and it was adjusted for a 'level 2' skill level (The skill levels are 1-4, 1 being the most basic and 4 being the most advanced). A typical class is actually 90 minutes long, but this one was divided so that Lauren from L.A. and I could each teach one half of it.

So I rather quickly began reading through the lesson plan material and picked out which exercises I wanted to do. Jane helped me think of an 'Engage" activity (basically an ice breaker to get the class started, which turned out to be charades, by the way) and looked over my lesson plan to make sure I was planning correctly.

In my lesson plan, I had to consider  the aims of the class material, potential problems for the students, potential problems as a teacher, each exercise and activity I was planning to achieve, (as well as how long I thought each exercise would take) any visuals I would include and the topic for the "Activate" section at the end of class (In this section the students are supposed to be encouraged in some way to have free conversation and discussion--in other words, they are supposed to ACTIVATE the language they learned). I wrote all of this down on a handy sheet of paper and then started planning the logistics.

At 3:50 pm, I was ready to go. My nerves started to calm and I began preparing my white board and worksheets. At 4:00 pm, they arrived.

My class only included 4 students, all of them Spanish adults. My program calls them "guinea pigs" because these students sign up for these particular classes knowing that their teachers will be beginners and in training. They are always sweet and supportive, and therefore an easy first class to teach.

Overall, my lesson went really well. I felt strangely comfortable in front of the classroom. I spoke slowly and confidently, and moved the lesson along with no trouble at all. They practiced telling the time, they learned how to say the time in more than one way ('one thirty' or 'half past one'), they learned how to say various phrases to describe daily activities, and even had a lively conversation about their own daily routines (They argued, for example, that the rest of the world has got it wrong. Lunch is really served at 3:00 pm and dinner is served at 9:00 pm.) They were a hoot! Again, it is hard to describe how cute it is to watch older people learn something for the first time, especially when they are as enthusiastic and unreserved as my class!

At the end of the lesson, I heard my students mumbling in Spanish. One of them mentioned that this was my very first class. The rest of them looked up at me and said "De verdad?! Uauuuu!" Which means, "Really?! Wow!" Then they clapped for me.

During my evaluation immediately after, Jane asked me if I had ever taught in a classroom before. She was surprised to hear that my only teaching experiences included teaching dance class in high school and volunteering in a Spanish classroom last fall. 

Perhaps I am a bit of a natural? Good thing I got my degree in Journalism..... ;)

Anyway, my first experience was a great one, and I look forward to even more teaching in the near future!