Wednesday, October 9, 2013

10-8-13 The Rainbow After the Storm

      Today, I went to the juvenile detention center and was placed to teach six 12-14 year old boys. I was terrified, but they were obedient and a few students definitely tried their hardest. Imagine, they had to sit through six 30-minute lessons (3 hours!) of our lessons, but they actually seemed to enjoy them. It’s probably better than the punishment they get in the center. :( One of my students even left in the middle of the lesson to probably do physical punishment (like push-ups or sweeping). Poor kids. One of my friends pointed out that they are just paying for their crimes, but still, when I looked at them and interacted with them, they were really just children.
     I truly loved teaching there and wish I could teach there more--I guess my wish is coming true because I am going to teach there again tomorrow. This time, I will be teaching about the hospital, so my vocabulary words will be “doctor, nurse, emergency room, x-ray, and medicine.”

     My observer was different this time, but he was a lot more detailed. He pointed out these things in my lesson plan:
-Good move to mix up the students (my comment: two of them were talkative, so that was actually my way to separate them and to get the other students moving)
-Positive and patient, great teacher presence!, perfect pronunciation, SMILEY :D (my comment: yes, he actually drew a smiley)
-Showed great energy. Excitement is contagious
-Great rate of speech and pronunciation
-Good use of body language (comment: he proceeded to draw my hands making a heart shape to show them what love meant)
-Kept things fun... laughed/smiled a lot (comment: ugh! I’m supposed to be firm, not happy all the time! :( )
-Good job having students help you write on WB 
-Showed great patience with students
-Good work helping with pronunciation issues


Things I need to work on:
-Try not to help too much with the game, let them figure it out for a minute, then help. (Comment: I felt like the students did not have an extensive enough of a vocabulary to play the game, but they did try. They even tried spelling “nine,” but spelled it “nen.” I let that slide, which was not a problem because they were doing their best with what they knew.)
=If they are sleeping or laying, ADDRESS IT! Point them out... poke fun at them... if that doesn’t work... BE STERN (NO SLEEPING). This will be easier when they are “your” students. 
(Comment: I know! I just felt like maybe the student needed a break because he quietly put his head down and he wasn’t disturbing anybody. Now I know you’ll argue with me because they shouldn’t be sleeping in class, but even our teacher told us that if it’s a once-in-a-blue-moon thing and as long as they aren’t being disruptive, you can give them a break because you don’t know what goes on in the students’ homes or minds. They could be too exhausted and just might need a break. If he continued it next class, I would definitely talk with him and let them know that it’s unacceptable. Or even if other students started doing it, I would address it immediately.)

     For lunch, we ended up going back to the food stand next to our favorite Tesco Lotus Express, which was serving vegetarian food. I ordered pad ka pao (sorry, spelling again), except this time it was vegetarian. Yummy though! :)
     Tonight, I am just sitting in a burger bar with some of my friends, and we are totally isolating ourselves behind our technology.

My laptop is the one in front in this view

     In any case, I liked the fries! That was actually my dinner for the night. Back to juvie tomorrow! (And the reason for not having pictures of the detention center is because the government does not allow us to take any.) I tried to look it up online but there aren't any great pictures of it. This is somewhat what our classrooms looked like: 

Copyright Google Images
*There were no girls, we had all boys, and they were in different-
colored shirts, like pink, purple, green, and blue.*

     In any case, if I didn't clearly emphasize so before, I loved my class--they were so much fun and listened well. They also seemed to really like my lesson; hopefully tomorrow I'll either have the same group or at least be able to see them again so I can at least say hi. :)


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