Clinical 1: A New Day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLY489_36j0obUUpiW_lLIwAXu1w5U3mGP&v=eAVtsPaYcOs

It is time to start the clinical portion of the teacher prep program. I have always found it difficult to do something for only one reason or goal and this is no exception. This will be functioning as a pilot for a professional development and community service project as we work the bugs out.

The US school system starts focusing on academics at an earlier age than Morocco. The Moroccan school groupings are maternal (preschool and kindergarten), primaire (1st-6th grades), college (junior high, 7th-9th grades), and lycée (high school, 10th-12th grades).

The students we selected for the clinical currently attend a local public school but they previously attended a private school where they studied English Language Arts two grade levels below their peers in the United States. The students are at a higher level than the ones who will be taught when the project is ready to go but we wanted to reduce variables while we worked things out in the pilot. We asked the school for ten to twelve third grade elementary students with at least a third of them having problems (learning and mental disabilities are not generally recognized in Morocco). The school provided ten third year college students with three of them having learning difficulties.

We held a meeting with the parents before the first class to present what we are doing and answer any questions or concerns. Normally, a proposal to give free English classes is met with distrust and skepticism over here. We have been developing a history of quiet community service work (no photo-ops or publicity) and providing free American and Moroccan cultural events and activities in the city; our reputation and open honest answers overcame all reservations. The parents left excited and the students had permission to use social media for their assignments.

The first lesson went well. I was nervous at the beginning but I always get nervous before the first day of class, doesn't matter how many times I've taught that level or those students. Below are some of my thoughts:

Name tags

This was a late addition to the lesson. Not everyone is the best with names and it was unknown how well the students know each other so I decided making name tags to hang on the front of the desks would be good. I use these name tags with students of all levels and ages; there are ten different cute clipart animals that can be easily colored in and almost everyone can find an animal they like. Usually, students will work on these during the boring parts of the first day.

What really surprised me was that students began arriving at 8h15 despite the class starting at 9h. I had them start working on the name tags to keep them busy as they arrived and played some lofi music on the tv. The first student wrote their name small so I stressed to subsequent students to write their names in large letters, something I usually forget to do each class. The students were kept busy until class started.

Writing the instructions on the board could help make the activity simpler but I was trying to reduce clutter on the board and it gave me a good excuse to speak with the students beyond greetings. I might look into changing the position of the table so my back isn’t towards the students as they come in the room.

Introductions

The students seemed to enjoy guessing information about the teacher and they did an excellent job at it, too. There were almost no repeated guesses and they found the answers very quickly, amongst the quickest of any class I’ve had. Their body language, facial expressions, and language use match those of past classes that became relaxed and active participants in the learning process which was the goal of the activity. The students quickly picked up on the modeling and followed it with little deviation into traditional practices of giving introductions which bodes well for following instructions in the future. I didn’t expect the lesson to finish as early as it did, otherwise I would have let more of the Andalusian song play and ask the students to sing along if they knew the words. I personally felt there was too much TTT after I watched the video but my mentor said it was not very much, especially for a first day, and the students at the end of the class said they wish there was more TTT. Normally, I would ignore any mentors or observers in the class but, as a shortcut to build rapport and gain trust, I asked her questions to verify that students can raise issues in the class since she’s their teacher Imane they trust her. This activity doubled as an assessment of the prerequisites for the upcoming lessons (ability to use the simple present) and the class did well. Two students stood out as potentially low performing and I marked them to pay more attention to during class.

Priming

The purpose of this part of the lesson was to further evaluate students’ English abilities and to start priming them to think about how videos on social media work. The biggest issue that happened here is there was confusion on the students’ part about what to do during the pair discussion, particularly with the two lower performing students. I didn’t follow normal practices of writing out all the instructions on the TV and explaining them more thoroughly. The discussion of the videos went well and students quickly grasped the different genres of videos and the concept of improving them, something I had concerns about. I did have to step back and ask a question I missed because of assumptions, that was about uploading videos. The students don’t upload videos to social media. We had extra time at the end of the lesson, next time I’ll probably show all of the videos instead of stopping the longer ones early. Something that really stood out as a good sign was when Iasked about the best language to study, I received a variety of responses.

Next lesson

The planned lesson finished early, so what’s one to do? I usually see teachers have their students start the homework in class. I planned just in case something like this happened so we started the next lesson early. We went over the grammar for the Simple Present but did the extended version since we definitely had the time. The students knew most of the rules already. When students were giving examples (part of the extended version), one of them tried bringing religion into the classroom. My mentor said I did a very good job handling that and making it clear that religion isn’t part of our lessons without upsetting or offending anyone.