O.K., I said my piece about guns yesterday. That still seems to be dominating the news, but I’m not going to write about it again for a few days, at least. The Russians are planning a lunar landing, and I considered writing about that, but it’s not a manned probe. So, it’s good news if you are a space buff but it’s nothing really exciting or glamorous. The woman we all knew as Dear Abby died at 94, which is noteworthy but not surprising (she was 94) and, to tell you the truth, I thought she’d died years ago.
So, I’ll just talk about my day, as it was a fairly good day. At first, I was dreading it. I’ve had a terrible cold (flu?) all week, uncontrollable runny nose, stuffy head, burning eyes, aching joints and today I had a full schedule, including a couple of classes which can be seriously problematic.
First class, at 8 a.m., was a piece of cake, though, and despite the snow, it really wasn’t that cold outside. It was just my 2nd class with that student, he’s almost 60, has a small company, and he likes to talk, which makes it all very easy. My next 3 classes were at school. First, the 6th graders. I didn’t have any idea what to do, so it was sort of improvised, but I’ve been thinking of how to implement Amy Cuddy’s advice (see my blog from Sunday night, which was the 13th) in my teaching, and I guess this was it, but indirectly.
I wrote on the board “Hello! My name is _____. I speak English.” I started by getting everybody to stand up and say that, which maybe sounded a little bit too much like an AA meeting, but the idea was, if I can get them to say often enough “I speak English,” then they will start to believe it, and they will start to do it.
Once around the room and I added the line “Every day I ____.” Each time, though, they had to repeat the 1st two lines. Then I added “I like _____.” It was working and I didn’t want to interrupt the exercise, but I didn’t really know where it was going, either. So I broke out the flashcards and added the line “The ____ is ____.” There were a couple more additions after that, but each time they repeated “I speak English” and I’m counting that as a success.
It worked O.K. with the 9th graders, too, and that’s a class I actually dread. They are a sullen lot, and they hate learning.
Couldn’t use it with the 1st graders, though, because they don’t read much yet, but they were pretty good today.
One more private lesson, picked Isabel up from school, then had to pick up Sam from football, and finally got home around 6. But my cold is mostly gone.
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