Not All Is Going As Planned

Today my co-teacher and I "practiced" our class that is going to be observed with the actual class we have to teach on monday. So, it's a completely artificial class, nothing factual at all. The students have to pretend like they've never heard this stuff before. Strange.

First of all, the co-teacher took my cell phone basket and had a student collect ALL cell phones. I was only going to take the ones I see being used. I have to admit, that was the best part of class. The kids put their phones in the basket, no problem. Who knew it was that easy? Certainly not I.

We did our little "show teaching," we used the big screen monitors, we used power point, we had a script and everything. I thought the class went really good, no problems. Of course, a few students didn't pay attention and kind of ruined the phony good vibe, or to speak in theatrical terms, they broke the 4th wall. My co-teacher even had two girls stand in the back of the room for speaking too much Korean!!!! I almost dropped dead from this. Why can't we do this when we normally teach?

I talked to the co-teacher after class and said I thought it went very well. She's worried. She's concerned about the students who didn't pay attention and ruined it. I told her not to worry, that even in the very best class a few students will not pay attention. I think it's more important that the "observer" sees us doing something with them, like making them stand at the back of the class, then just letting it continue. That's more important than all of the students acting like children of the corn. I don't know if this helped her or not. Oh well, I'm not worried. If it goes bad they can deport me for all I care, I'm so indifferent to being here that it couldn't bother me any less. I think monday will go fine though.