Things at my smaller school, TJHS, have been a little hectic lately. This is because next week we'll be having a demonstration class. Essentially, a considerable number of teachers (and my supervisor as well) will be coming to watch us during class. I suppose this isn't so unusual, but it seems kind of ridiculous that they're doing something like this at such a small school. From the sounds of it, there will be ten or more teachers watching a class of eight students.
Naturally, Y-sensei (the English teacher) and I are fairly nervous about it. I've been trying to think of it as just another class, but Y-sensei hasn't been making it easy to do. For the past few weeks she's been telling me how anxious she is about the class. Which isn't very reassuring, given that she has been a teacher for quite some time and I've been an ALT for, oh, about four months. Honestly, I'm a little annoyed about it. Then again, she might have reason to be worried. Elizabeth told me about a time when another ALT got to sit in on the feedback session after a demonstration class. Basically, the observing teachers were given free rein to tear the demonstration teacher apart. They didn't provide constructive criticism, they just assaulted her with negative comments. To the point that the teacher ended up in tears.
I'm really hoping that that was an unusual case, and that Y-sensei isn't going to get the same treatment. I don't want any mistake I make to reflect on her. Of course, I'm also worried about my performance for my own sake. It makes me nervous that my supervisor will be watching. I don't like the thought that she might be dissatisfied with me after seeing me with an actual class. Another thing I'm rather insecure about is the fact that I don't have the students' names memorized. It's a small enough class that I should know them all, but I've been struggling with it. I had been using a seating chart to help me attach a name to each student during class, but they changed seats just recently, so my seating chart is now useless. I convinced Y-sensei to let me make nametags for the students to wear during the lesson, but I don't think she was very happy with the idea. Oh well. I'm going to do what's necessary for me to be successful.
As for preparations, I think we may have overdone it. I've typed and retyped the lesson plan several times. We went over the lesson plan maybe three times today, choreographing every step of every activity. I've spent several hours over the past three weeks making materials for the class, and I've had to redo parts of them when Y-sensei had other ideas about how they should be made. We've pre-taught the lesson we'll be demonstrating, and she's going to make the students review it again before the actual demonstration class. For an activity where the students are supposed to give each other directions, she had me type up dialogues for the students to memorize. Which seems like it might actually make things more difficult than necessary, given that the students have to remember their lines rather than simply reasoning their way through the activity. Obviously, it's not an easy lesson, but last time we did it, I thought the students did well. The hardest thing for them was actually remembering which direction they were facing in order to choose correctly between "left" and "right".
I'm not really sure what the objective of the demonstration class is. I'm guessing the idea is to show how team teaching should work during a typical lesson. I don't think this class will be all that representative of how a typical lesson goes, though. We're doing activities that we don't usually do, such as dictation, and we've pre-taught all the material. The 2nd year class was chosen specifically because it would be the easiest to work with. Y-sensei thinks the 1st years don't understand anything (which might be partly true), and that the 3rd year class is too small. Given that the class sizes only differ by two students, I think the real reason is that the 2nd years are more obedient. The 3rd years are smarter and understand more, but they're also a bit sassy. They're probably my favorite students out of both of the schools I go to, actually.
Anyhow, I apologize for the rant. This demonstration class is kind of a large milestone, I think, and I'm nervous about it. I can't believe it came up so fast; this semester is going by really quickly for me. When I was marking all of the semester's events into my agenda in August, it felt like November was an eternity away. And pretty soon, November will be halfway gone as well.
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