first day of teaching

alright, so here’s what’s up.

training: during sat training, I will flatter myself and say I was one of the best teachers who wasn’t already employed by tpr. we had a few people who were already trained in mkat or toefl or lsat or whatever, and they were all really comfortable in front of a classroom and did a really good job presenting material.  outside of those 2 people, I think I was the best of the nine, which I was totally happy with. when tl training (targeted learning, aka teaching english) started, people were more comfortable, and the lines started blurring. then on day 3 of training, I got a case of the nerves and didn’t prepare as well as I should have, and gave a sub-average teachback to the class. the trainer, who was scary, and my boss like 3 levels up, was brutally honest about how it wasn’t up to my usual standard.  that naturally made me more nervous the next day, so that one wasn’t great either. finally, I told myself to chill out, I knew how to do this, and things started to get better. I ended up getting ranked 5th in tl training, and put 3rd in line for a tl level a (which mean they’re already pretty good at english). I was a backup teacher, which means right now they didn’t have enough students enrolled to give me a class, but on that last weekend they were hoping enough might signup. I would come monday morning, sit around, and teach if they needed me.  so I might get one class (sat), might get two (sat and tl). two classes get you paid twice as much, and I want that.

I show up monday, and they were so close to the limit it wasn’t even funny. I end up getting a class with 7 kids in it. it’s usually like 15.  so now I have a tl class, and it’s really small! I spend more time getting to know my kids, personalizing the class, and have fewer essays to grade! this is perfect! 

so class monday didn’t go the smoothest, I didn’t have to do sat because they al took a diagnostic instead of learning, but tl I did teach, and I was a little nervous, but it went okay. the kids were really shy, nobody wanted to talk to each other or me, it was basically me talking for three hours.  after the first day though, they warmed up and got into it, mostly after I started telling embarrassing stories, which I have like a million of.  so tl is going great!

sat classes on tuesday I just felt terrible about, I was nervous, I had the second smartest or smartest group, and all class I kept getting looks like, “what, you’re teaching us this?” they’re good at math, and don’t buy into the tricks and tips I’m teaching, which I don’t really blame them for, I didn’t either at first.  things went better yesterday (wednesday), and I’m hoping today will go even smoother. just a matter of me getting more comfortable.