ecco, allora:
it's getting a bit cold now, and by cold i mean like 60 degrees fahrenheit. certainly not brown cold, but still, it feels like a fall. all the palermitani of course are bundled up as if we were in alaska. and then it it's completely dark by 5:30 pm, which is always a drag.
so, last week was pretty exhausting. thankfully there's no school on monday, since on november 1 italians celebrate all saints' day, probably better known in the U.S. as dia de los muertos, aka day of the dead. i made this huge to-do list for the weekend and i've accomplished basically nothing on it, so let's hope tomorrow is super productive.
last week, then. this ESL consultant visited me on thursday to observe one of my classes, chat with me afterwards, and then conduct a workshop with the english teachers at galilei. i was unnecessarily nervous about it, but it went really well, in the end. she was very positive about my lesson, a basic geography lesson very much in the american style, where the kids had to get up and move around and work in groups on different things that they'll then present to the rest of the class. as she commented to me afterwards, it's amusing how when you first ask them to stand up and move around, there's this stunned silence, a few moments during which they think they've misheard you and they don't understand what you want from them. the concept of being asked by the teacher to get up out of their seats is so foreign to them. luckily this was a small class, sixteen kids, and a quiet one, though their level of english comprehension isn't terribly high. the whole getting-up-and-changing-seats-and-working-in-groups thing didn't work out nearly as well in the larger, rowdier classes.
then over lunch she gave me some constructive criticism, mostly about "classroom management" and pacing. and she had a lot of ideas and suggestions about classroom activities, a lot of which were really helpful. [i do have to admit though, it was kind of amusing that after the big spiel she gave me on "managing" a classroom, the english teachers at the workshop later proved to be entirely unmanageable themselves, thus proving that trying to get a bunch of italians to work in small groups in a remotely orderly fashion is about as easy as herding cats, no matter who you are].
the workshop, on teaching american literature, was really good, though i'm curious to hear about what the teachers thought of it. it presented a way different approach to teaching american literature than they had in mind. scarlet letter, yeah right. try a two-paragraph excerpt from the house on mango street. it makes way more sense, though i do remember hating it when in english class we used to have to read a brief excerpt from something and analyze it to death, break it up into so many small pieces that it no longer means anything. that’s what destroyed To Kill a Mockingbird for me. I remember every time we read a chapter we had to answer in writing like 80 questions about every little detail from that chapter – what was scout wearing, what did scout’s aunt serve for tea, etc. – and it was the most tedious thing imaginable.
but, to my surprise, i find myself tempted to gravitate towards some of the same methods and exercises that i found irritating as a student. they often make sense in theory. and then i’m usually reminded that no, relocating them to italy doesn’t make them any less irritating. i have to learn to trust my initial instincts.
as i was telling this american esl consultant, i don’t really have experience teaching esl. but i do have plenty of experience as a language student, having taken spanish, latin, french, and then italian in my school days. And that’s not a bad background to have, as long as i can learn to trust it.
so, last week was pretty exhausting. thankfully there's no school on monday, since on november 1 italians celebrate all saints' day, probably better known in the U.S. as dia de los muertos, aka day of the dead. i made this huge to-do list for the weekend and i've accomplished basically nothing on it, so let's hope tomorrow is super productive.
last week, then. this ESL consultant visited me on thursday to observe one of my classes, chat with me afterwards, and then conduct a workshop with the english teachers at galilei. i was unnecessarily nervous about it, but it went really well, in the end. she was very positive about my lesson, a basic geography lesson very much in the american style, where the kids had to get up and move around and work in groups on different things that they'll then present to the rest of the class. as she commented to me afterwards, it's amusing how when you first ask them to stand up and move around, there's this stunned silence, a few moments during which they think they've misheard you and they don't understand what you want from them. the concept of being asked by the teacher to get up out of their seats is so foreign to them. luckily this was a small class, sixteen kids, and a quiet one, though their level of english comprehension isn't terribly high. the whole getting-up-and-changing-seats-and-working-in-groups thing didn't work out nearly as well in the larger, rowdier classes.
then over lunch she gave me some constructive criticism, mostly about "classroom management" and pacing. and she had a lot of ideas and suggestions about classroom activities, a lot of which were really helpful. [i do have to admit though, it was kind of amusing that after the big spiel she gave me on "managing" a classroom, the english teachers at the workshop later proved to be entirely unmanageable themselves, thus proving that trying to get a bunch of italians to work in small groups in a remotely orderly fashion is about as easy as herding cats, no matter who you are].
the workshop, on teaching american literature, was really good, though i'm curious to hear about what the teachers thought of it. it presented a way different approach to teaching american literature than they had in mind. scarlet letter, yeah right. try a two-paragraph excerpt from the house on mango street. it makes way more sense, though i do remember hating it when in english class we used to have to read a brief excerpt from something and analyze it to death, break it up into so many small pieces that it no longer means anything. that’s what destroyed To Kill a Mockingbird for me. I remember every time we read a chapter we had to answer in writing like 80 questions about every little detail from that chapter – what was scout wearing, what did scout’s aunt serve for tea, etc. – and it was the most tedious thing imaginable.
but, to my surprise, i find myself tempted to gravitate towards some of the same methods and exercises that i found irritating as a student. they often make sense in theory. and then i’m usually reminded that no, relocating them to italy doesn’t make them any less irritating. i have to learn to trust my initial instincts.
as i was telling this american esl consultant, i don’t really have experience teaching esl. but i do have plenty of experience as a language student, having taken spanish, latin, french, and then italian in my school days. And that’s not a bad background to have, as long as i can learn to trust it.
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