Helming Andy's Class

When I first arrived at Learning Well Institute (LWI), I took over classes that my director David had been teaching. He was away on a personal trip to the States and most of them were now to be my classes. The week he came back from the States, he took back one class on Tuesday/Thursday and a week later took back two more on the same days. That left me with no classes to teach on those two days. The week after that, the administration decided to have me sit in on one of Brandon's and one of Andy's classes every Tuesday and Thursday.

Brandon and Andy have joked for the last couple of weeks that I should teach their classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I never really considered it because I had my own classes to teach and I didn't want to be a glorified substitute. I guess the real reason why I hadn't considered it was laziness; I kind of enjoyed not having anything to do and just didn't want any more work. Andy asked me again today if I would take one of them, this time somewhat seriously. He said it might be an easy class and, for reasons that I can't quite identify, I decided to give it a try. I'm really glad I chose to; it ended up as the highlight of my day. It was really fun and energetic, though at times too loud and riotous. But, all in all, the kids responded well and I think I'd do it again.

The kids were studying a book called Sounds Fun!, which focuses on building vocabulary. The lesson seemed simple enough: review the words and have the students fill out pages in the book with crossword puzzles and matching sets. But I didn't just want to throw seatwork at them--and what would I do when they finished? As I had brought from the States a method book for teaching vocabulary, I consulted it to find a game or activity that would reenforce the words I wanted to teach. I wasn't interested in having the students learn "a list" of words; I wanted the words to sink deeply into their knowledge base. But the sheets and activities I found all centered around a deeper knowledge than these students had capacity for, due to the language barrier. I guess that meant I was back to square one in my planning.

An idea began to form in my head: What if I found pictures that more accurately illustrated the students' words than the simplistic drawings in the book? What if I came up with my own activity? Instead of just drawing lines to the pictures--because that, after all, was part of their seatwork--what if I had them figure out the word first and then match it to the pictures? I began to get very excited about this new "game" I came up with and hoped that I had enough time to do it. In my planning, I had put together a word search for the kids and had already decided to do that first.

The lesson for the day morphed into a lesson in spelling. To help the kids with this fundamental, I adapted a game that I had put together in my time at Believers Academy. Basically, it's a relay: students group into teams and individually run to the board to write down whatever it is that you have them practicing, whether a grammatical something, musical notation, or spelling words. To save time and increase a sense of urgency during the game, you can leave the answers up till the end and afterwards go over them for accuracy with the class. One point is given to the team who finishes first, but points are also given for correctness; the fastest team isn't neccessarily the winner. The kids at BA really enjoyed it, so I thought it would be a good extension activity for Andy's students.

Mercifully, Andy had warned me that the kids get a little uncontrollable during games. He suggested I limit mine to ten minutes. I was never so thankful for his advice than when I stood in front of his class this afternoon trying to get them to calm down! Just before we quit the game, I began to feel a sense of futile frustration at the constant rise in volume. We literally were able to play the game for no more than ten minutes, which was just enough time to have everyone go once. After the activity, I decided to pass out my fun worksheet instead of the word search, since it reenforced spelling and better complimented the class' structure. I was quite surprised at how fast the kids worked; some of them were even able to start the other worksheet before the end of class.

Today's class was surprisingly enjoyable to teach. I'm not sure what I liked more: preparing or being up in front of the classroom. The kids seemed to enjoy me being there and once I established certain rules, like when to be quiet, they were largely obedient. Even though the game was a bit chaotic, it was kid-friendly. It felt really good to teach them something and better still to have shared with them a little part of myself.