Starting to Teach

As with many people who go abroad to teach, I didn’t have much prior teaching experience. I had ‘taught’ for a month at a summer school in India, however ‘babysat for 3 hours in the morning’ would have been a much more accurate description. Some people take to teaching immediately, and I remember talking to other people who were working at the same school as me who from the first week seemed to be fitting in quite well. They would animatedly talk about how much they were enjoying it and how well they were getting on with their students. Whilst I nodded along sagely, in reality I had no real clue what I was supposed to do in the classroom. The problem was twofold; I was still quite nervous to be in front of 45 students (albeit ones who were 7 years old) and I was not really sure how to structure a class properly. For me I think that when you solve the second problem the first solves itself.

The first class I taught was a fairly classic example of me having no idea how to teach a class or knowledge of activities to use. The children were supposed to be learning ‘What is your name? My name is..’ Assuming that the children would pick it up immediately I got them to repeat the two sentences and set about asking them their name. It turned out none of them could say the sentence clearly (apparently one repetition is not enough for fluency), they didn’t actually know what it meant and besides which none of them had English names (apparently it was my job to provide them with English names). It was then that I realised that other than getting them to repeat the sentences after me I had no real idea what games or activities to use, and that I still had 35 minutes of the class left with very little idea of what to do in it. Talking to some of the teachers who were in their second year was greatly helpful as they were able to tell me a variety of games and activities that could be used when teaching words and sentences. The other thing that I learnt by experience was how quickly (or slowly as is usually the case) to cover different topics and how to go through things in a step by step manner that the students can understand. Once I had a better knowledge of how to actually teach and what to do in the classroom the confidence just came with it.

I still remember the turning point when I reached the lofty heights of being a semi-competent teacher. Having wrapped up a class on prepositions of place, which some of the students even understood, I turned to my co-teacher to see her grinning at me. After asking what was making her smile she replied that that class was actually ‘quite good’ – it only took two months.