...and the Academy Award Goes To......

After my last attempt to record a lesson I realize that when teaching youngsters, the 'greeting' phase of a lesson rarely follows a script.  I continue to ask students, "How are you today?"  The responses are rarely, "I'm fine."  It is more likely that a student will tell me that they are hungry and then proceed to beg me for snacks.  Often my students say that they are hot and then ask to leave class to get a drink of water.  Once a student told me he was doing great because his family was moving into a bigger apartment.  I was especially eager to hear about this student's experience.  During the week preceding the move, he was more talkative than he'd ever been.  The point is that it takes a while to get through the 'greeting' part of my lessons.

Normally, this free discourse is a welcomed aspect of my lesson.  I am building relationships with my students and I am truly interested in their daily experiences and consequent moods.  However, when the camera is rolling, I become very aware of the time restrictions of each phase of my planned lesson.  During this week's greeting phase of my recorded lesson, a student told me about her paper cut.  As she smiled, she expressed how bad she was feeling.  I knew that this student's comments were going to interfere with my allotted 'greeting time'.  I immediately felt anxious.  Then, almost as quickly, I got over it; I mustn't be overly concerned about the camera.  My student needed a little attention.  I wanted to show her that I cared.  I wanted to point out the smile that contradicted her stated misery.  So, I stopped acting and allowed myself to be the kind of teacher I needed to be at that moment.

Despite the thirty dollar battery and the fifteen dollar memory card I foolishly bought two weeks ago at Yongsan market, my damaged camera only recorded about twelve minutes of my lesson.  The class greeting included a paper cut, a Saturday bible test and a Saturday math test.  The rest of the lesson was one of the best I've had in that class.  Had I spent less time on the greeting, I would have recorded more of the PPP phases of the lesson.  Yet, I am happy with the result.

When I present this preview lesson to my STG classmates there will be many elements of acting.  They will be acting like novice adult students and I will be acting like I am teaching novice adult students.  However, when I am in my true classroom, it is best to do what is most beneficial for my students.  Ignore the camera.  Engage the students.