Different Levels

I  teach at the  Iranian Embassy School in Prague, which has its positives and negatives.  On the one hand, my students are delightful.  I’ve got kids from 7 to 12, about evenly mixed between boys and girls, and every single one of them is co-operative and eager to learn.  Of course, some of them speak better English than others.  There are three who I could actually have a free flowing conversation with, two or three who haven’t got a clue, and four or five in between.

I am kind of weirded out by their culture, though.  I don’t like it that the women cannot shake my hand, and they all have to keep their hair covered -it’s not a full burka, they aren’t Saudis or Afghanis, but I still feel it’s repressive, and I feel like I’m enabling that repression.  I sometimes wonder what I can say and can’t say, and I find it weirdly disturbing that a couple of the girls always write “In the name of God…” at the top of their homework.  Also, I’m a poet and very aware of the fact that a poet was recently hanged in Iran, for writing poetry that the authorities didn’t like.

I don’t talk about that stuff, though.  My job is to teach them English.  Everybody needs to learn English, and I need the work.

Anyway, I started a new class today, because one of the mothers decided her daughter needed some extra lessons at home (she’s in that in-between group).  I’d decided I was going to try a writing exercise with her, but as soon as I got there, her mother suggested that the 4 year old little sister join the lesson.  So, I dumbed it way down, farm animal flashcards, and still couldn’t keep the little one’s interest.  Fortunately, the mother also realized fairly quickly that it wasn’t going to work.

Then, we were joined by two other kids, one 8 year old boy from the class and his older sister, who is quite good, so I had 3 students (which is good, it is easier than working with just 1) at wildly different levels.

It worked out O.K., because they are all friends and the bigger girl was quite nice about helping both the others.

When I first started teaching, I thought “I’m going to direct my lessons to the fastest students, and let the others try and keep up.  It will do them good.”  That teaching philosophy collapsed on first contact with reality.

Unfortunately, after 16 years of teaching, I still don’t know what to  do when students are at different levels.  You hope that the smart ones will help the slower ones, but you can’t count on that.  You try to give the smarter ones a bit more of a challenge, and show a little bit more patience to the slower ones, but it does slow things down.

One muddles through, as one must.