I taught my first English class today! I was caught slightly off guard after being thrown into the middle of teaching a form 6 English class (the regular teacher met with me 5 minutes before class started, handed me a book of grammar activities, pointed and said, “Here’s where we ended. That’s where you can start!”). I’ve had some practice teaching before with religious education throughout high school, but never English as a second language. And while I thought that Pijin has been slightly challenging to follow, I can only imagine the difficulty that English grammar presents to these students –for many of them this is their third language!
Opening the workbook up to the unit, it was a lesson on ‘Concepts in Writing’ focusing on drawing conclusions and describing the differences between implicit and explicit conclusions. Ok. I took a deep breath. I got this. While the explanation and activities took up less than a page in the workbook, I spent the entire 50 minutes trying to explain the use of conclusions in writing, making up examples and trying desperately to get the class involved. One thing I noticed, and something that Srs Regina and Loretta also advised, is that students in the Solomon Islands will respond however it makes the teacher happy – whether they understand the material or not. Because of the culture, too, they very rarely make eye contact (especially after I’ve asked a question, so they don’t get called on, but is that really all that different from students in the US?!) and sometimes also respond by raising their eyebrows instead of nodding. While teaching explicit vs. implicit statements, I couldn’t help but be humored at the irony of the implicit messages they were sending!
Yet after my initial surprise, at the end of teaching the second period of teaching the same lesson, I felt much more confident and comfortable engaging with the class. By the time they left they were all smiling and laughing (ok, they were laughing at me because I had never heard of ‘String Band’ before, which is a type of music here in the Solomons) and a few volunteered some Pijin phrases (“Tanggio teachin fo mifala,” which is “thank you for teaching us”).
Embarking on this trip, one of the goals I had written in my proposal was that I wanted to become more flexible and patient. Today’s teaching experience was not just an English exercise for the students, but also a humbling experience and made me improvise, taking into account the individual personalities of the students. While I’ve always tended to be one to spend time agonizing over a paper or presentation outline, today it was all about recognizing when the students needed an explanation repeated or given another example. As I return to Alegegio Secondary School for the next two weeks, I will continue to learn from these students as I teach them English.
I’m off to review some geography notes from one of the social studies teachers, whose class I will be teaching tomorrow. Tomorrow’s lesson: the use of the population demographic transition model…oh boy…
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