Musings on Teaching

4:21 on a Friday afternoon. My husband is at school tonight and I don't have anything to do until 7 pm, so I thought I would give an update on my life. :) I just put in season 2 of Prison Break, but even the intro music scared me and I decided I had better wait to watch it until Matt's home. Plus, it's been awhile since I have posted anything so I thought blogging would be a better use of my time.

So, I started teaching the summer session at Harper on June 9th. I'm teaching intermediate grammar, advanced grammar and a conversation class. I like each class for different reasons: intermediate grammar is fun because I have such a random mix of students. Some are super shy, and some I can't get to shut up. They are wide-eyed and extremely eager to learn. It's a big class, though, so it's hard to get to know my students. They seem to like me and like coming to class, so that's good. My conversation class is fun because it's only nine students, and basically we get to talk the whole time! It's so interesting learning about thier lives. Two of my students are also newlyweds (one is from Turkey and one is from Mexico, and they both just married American citizens!) One girl was telling me that she cannot earn American citizenship for three years because during those 3 years, the government comes to their house to check to see if they really are "married" (for example, they will literally look in the closets to see if a woman's clothes are there, they'll look for family pictures on the walls, etc). Crazy, crazy, crazy. One of my students is from Thailand and every time I see her or talk to her, it SO brings me back! Last is advanced grammar. It's super challenging, one, because the class is two and a half hours long, and two, because I have to teach myself the grammar in order to explain it to them. The English language is extremely complex. So, needless to say, I spend hours and hours learning the ins and outs of a particular grammatical structure as well as figuring out the best way to teach it to people whose first language is not English.

All in all, though, I decided yesterday that I love my job. One of our conversation topics in class was, "What did you want to be when you grew up?" and I remembered that I always wanted to be a teacher. My mom even made the toyroom into a classroom with a chalk board and a long table for my "students" to sit at. My friends used to make fun of me because I always wanted to "play school" (Jen had the best school kit with like nametags, a green chalk board, a bell, etc... I loved it). I used to be entertained for hours just teaching my pretend students about compound words or state capitals or division. Five years ago, I never would have guessed that this is where I'd be, but for now, it's a good fit.

Sometimes I wonder if I have the right personality for teaching, however. I am a perfectionist and a people pleaser, so needless to say, I have a tendency to 1) spend far too much time on my lesson plans and 2) get anxious before every class I teach. But I truly, truly believe that the Lord has given me the job he has so that I would be forced to rely on his strength, to pray, and be dependent on him. He's teaching me, too, to not be anxious (this has been an ongoing battle in my life). So teaching English is a difficult job, but I am challenged and am learning a lot, not only about past unreal conditionals and present progressive verb tenses, but about myself and God.