I am enjoying my job again - finally! This is the first time this school year that I have been excited about what I do. This is mostly thanks to the great national teaching conference I went to this past weekend. I got so many good ideas that it was almost overwhelming, but it started to make me feel my passion for teaching once again.
Last night I totally redid my lessons from now through Christmas break. I was going to start a new chapter today and do the same old stuff...a listening activity here, a speaking activity there, etc. I do normally manage to make learning the language fun, but it's never as relevant as it should be.
Today, I had my students make passports and write a postcard about themselves to their new "host family" in Mexico. I told them that tomorrow we are flying to Mexico (thanks to Google Earth, they will be able to see what that looks like...sort of) and we'll spend the next few weeks there. Tomorrow we'll have our pretend flight complete with an in-flight movie and flight attendants. During class for the next few weeks they'll have tasks to do that teach the same material that I would have done, but it will be much more meaningful. For example, instead of making a ven diagram with foods that are for breakfast and foods that are for lunch (an activity in the textbook), they'll make a shopping list for their host mom of their favorite foods for breakfast and lunch. I just hope I can be creative enough to come up with stuff like this for every day.
Sorry for the rambling about teaching, but I am excited that I am excited about teaching. It's been months since I've felt this kind of motivation.
Now, I'm just anxious to see what I find out in the next few days... So far, so good.
Last night I totally redid my lessons from now through Christmas break. I was going to start a new chapter today and do the same old stuff...a listening activity here, a speaking activity there, etc. I do normally manage to make learning the language fun, but it's never as relevant as it should be.
Today, I had my students make passports and write a postcard about themselves to their new "host family" in Mexico. I told them that tomorrow we are flying to Mexico (thanks to Google Earth, they will be able to see what that looks like...sort of) and we'll spend the next few weeks there. Tomorrow we'll have our pretend flight complete with an in-flight movie and flight attendants. During class for the next few weeks they'll have tasks to do that teach the same material that I would have done, but it will be much more meaningful. For example, instead of making a ven diagram with foods that are for breakfast and foods that are for lunch (an activity in the textbook), they'll make a shopping list for their host mom of their favorite foods for breakfast and lunch. I just hope I can be creative enough to come up with stuff like this for every day.
Sorry for the rambling about teaching, but I am excited that I am excited about teaching. It's been months since I've felt this kind of motivation.
Now, I'm just anxious to see what I find out in the next few days... So far, so good.
2 comments:
This is great! I'm so glad to hear you are enjoying life and I'm sure your students are loving your creative ideas.
Wow, sounds like fun and glad to hear you are enjoying your job! Do you offer arabic classes? I could sure use some fun during arabic!!!
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