My internship has been going really well. I've been getting closer to some of the teachers who work at the Gymnasium (German High School) I'm doing my internship at. I taught my first class today. I think I psyched myself up so much about it that it ended up being so much better than I thought it would be. Of course teaching is by no means easy but I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be. Confidence and Knowledge is really what you need. Since I was teaching an English (as a foreign language) class I had the knowledge. Some of the kids actually came after class and told me how good my English was! I don't think they had been told I was from the United States and English is my first language haha. Even though English is my first language I still needed to plan the lesson and make sure I knew about the subject I was teaching.
Fortunately they use an English book so there were pictures and audio that I could use as tools. I was also able to talk with the teacher about my lesson plan and that was very helpful. I was mostly worried about the students not participating but thankfully that was not the case. I had been in this same 8th Grade class the previous week just as a spectator and so I had seen how some of the students hadn't really been paying attention to the teacher and were having a lot of side conversations. Anyways, there was some of that today as well but for the most part a lot of the students were very attentive and participated and were eager to speak in English and talk about sports.
I talked with the teacher after I had finished the lesson to see if she had any tips for me and she said that I actually did a really good job and I had "talent." Whether that's true or not, I'm not sure but it was still nice to hear. She did have a few tips though that were actually very helpful. All in all it went really well and I actually enjoyed it so it was very cool for me to see that I could actually teach a class.
On Friday I will be teaching another English class but this time it will be an 11th grade English Class. It will be not such a fun subject, because we will be talking about 9/11 and "America as a Global Superpower." It will be interesting to see what the students here will say about these two topics though and I am looking forward to it because their English is actually quite good.
If you have any questions for me my email is drussosavage@lclark.edu -- feel free to contact me for any reason if you would so like.
Tschüss!
-Delia
Fortunately they use an English book so there were pictures and audio that I could use as tools. I was also able to talk with the teacher about my lesson plan and that was very helpful. I was mostly worried about the students not participating but thankfully that was not the case. I had been in this same 8th Grade class the previous week just as a spectator and so I had seen how some of the students hadn't really been paying attention to the teacher and were having a lot of side conversations. Anyways, there was some of that today as well but for the most part a lot of the students were very attentive and participated and were eager to speak in English and talk about sports.
I talked with the teacher after I had finished the lesson to see if she had any tips for me and she said that I actually did a really good job and I had "talent." Whether that's true or not, I'm not sure but it was still nice to hear. She did have a few tips though that were actually very helpful. All in all it went really well and I actually enjoyed it so it was very cool for me to see that I could actually teach a class.
On Friday I will be teaching another English class but this time it will be an 11th grade English Class. It will be not such a fun subject, because we will be talking about 9/11 and "America as a Global Superpower." It will be interesting to see what the students here will say about these two topics though and I am looking forward to it because their English is actually quite good.
If you have any questions for me my email is drussosavage@lclark.edu -- feel free to contact me for any reason if you would so like.
Tschüss!
-Delia