Lessons learned

Things have been going quite well since getting pushed out of the dancing monkey factory in January. When I arrived here more than a year an a half ago, I intended to actually teach English as a foreign language. I really didn't enjoy the idea of standing in front of a class as entertainment.

Last night I had a review lesson with one student for an hour. She breezed through the material and proved that she could handle it--although she does need to practice her pronunciation at times. With about ten minutes remaining in the class, we talked about methods of learning. She mentioned that other teachers let her and other students slide with their mistakes of forgetting to include articles and small prepositions. She thought I made class difficult when I'd simply ask students to say their sentences again without informing them of what their mistake was. She noted that it was helping her to notice her own mistakes and forcing her to take more time to think about what she should say.

Later in the day, I had the entire class. I prepared a rather large grammar exercise for the entire class. After the first half of class, the students began correcting each other when mistakes were made--without any prompts from me to do so. I found great pride in knowing that my students can pick up on their errors and help others with their errors as well (and this class is the lowest level I teach).