Typical ESL Classroom in China
How’s it going?
It’s November now.
That means if you’re a new teacher you’ve been doing this for about 2 months now.
Is it everything you thought it would be?
It’s hard to know what ESL teaching will be like until you start doing it.
You really have no way to prepare for the screaming kids when you’re trying to maintain order, the silent stares when you’re asking an “easy” question, or the pure befuddlement you feel when you get no support from your school or boss.
Yeah, ESL teaching can be tough.
Well…what can you do about it?
The easiest thing is to get online and email your parents and tell them you fucked up.
Get them to buy you a plane ticket back home. It’s safe, it’s easy…you can still get out of this.
But you didn’t do that, and I doubt you will. No, you’ve been at it for 2 months now and you’re going to see it through.
It’s November now.
That means if you’re a new teacher you’ve been doing this for about 2 months now.
Is it everything you thought it would be?
It’s hard to know what ESL teaching will be like until you start doing it.
You really have no way to prepare for the screaming kids when you’re trying to maintain order, the silent stares when you’re asking an “easy” question, or the pure befuddlement you feel when you get no support from your school or boss.
Yeah, ESL teaching can be tough.
Well…what can you do about it?
The easiest thing is to get online and email your parents and tell them you fucked up.
Get them to buy you a plane ticket back home. It’s safe, it’s easy…you can still get out of this.
But you didn’t do that, and I doubt you will. No, you’ve been at it for 2 months now and you’re going to see it through.
So…what else can you do?
Maybe a better question is what can you not do?
You’ve already screwed the pooch countless times in class. Hey, we all make tons of mistakes – it’s how you learn.
The good thing is that you’ve learned what doesn’t work and what you never, ever want to do again.
Yeah, I’m talking about those flopped-lessons where you suddenly had a 55 minutes to kill and nothing to do.
Thankfully you know about this site so you had a jeopardy game or adventure or fun vocabulary PowerPoint to fall back on.
But can you really do that everyday, each week?
No, you can’t.
So figure out what doesn’t work and start to analyze why it didn’t work. Then start doing the same with the things that did work.
That’s a bit part of learning, whether it’s English or how the hell to teach it. You have to figure out what’s working for you and then do more of that.
I suggest getting games on my site and PowerPoints you can work lessons around.
If you have some support from your school then I’d suggest working around the book they give you…at least as much as you can.
I remember in 2009 the school wanted me to just teach the same pages that had been taught already that week. Wow, that sure as shit didn’t help me!
So find what’s working and what’s not and see if you can go from there.
I hope it helps, and don’t be afraid to “bitch” in the comments about your ESL experiences so far.
