When I talk about teaching I usually talk about how much I like teaching and that it is a wonderful experience and the best decision I ever made. That is still my opinion and I am still very happy but today it is time to talk about some things that can drive you crazy and that can not be explained easily.
Winning and losing in terms of the classes attention, willingness to work and enthusiasm lie so close together. It is incredible. For me right now it is a quite interesting social phenomenon that I do not understand in its entity but I am trying to work on it.
still putting fun(k) into english
The latest encounter that drove me almost over the edge (I couldn’t sleep for days!) was the following: I have two classes on the same level (Grade 2 students) from the same field (tourism) with everybody having almost the same social background and similar interests. Should be easy to teach. Find out what one class likes and the other will enjoy it as well. But by no means….while class number 2 enjoyed almost every activity I brought into class and completed their unusual assignments with great enthusiasm class number 1 became more and more uncooperative and almost never did what I expected. They always complained about everything and the more I tried to explain, to give examples or to steer them into the right direction, the more complicated it went.
Since this was the class that took care of me after my accident (but I already liked them a lot before that incident) it somehow broke my heart to see that I start to lose contact to them. Usually this was the fun class, the one that enjoys my stuff and the one that I am always looking forward to see. But now we somehow drifted apart. The other class now improves on a steady level and even the shy students start to spread their wings (at least a little) and lose their shyness.
This shows me that my methods can not be that bad but it also leaves me wondering what happened to my cool and fun class and how could I happen to lose touch for this class. I think I have to possibilities left. Number 1 would be to choose a completely different approach again. Something they are not used to, something they did not experience before what will bring them back onto the fun track and hopefully back where learning English is fun. Number 2 might be the way into ‘normal’ teaching like most of the other English teachers do. Simple learning from the workbook and writing boring reports as assignments. I am quite sure neither of us wants possibility number 2 to happen but it might be the only way left in the end.
As you can see winning and losing really stay close together and sometimes you can’t even tell why you win or why you lose. I will try my best to turn the losing streak into a winning one again since losing this very special class really made me sad but I am not sure if it will succeed.
Despite all sadness about my first teaching setback I think I will learn a lot from this experience and hopefully understand the mechanisms of group dynamics and student psychology better by the time.
