spacealien_vamp (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spacealien_vamp) wrote2004-09-03 09:01 pm
spacealien_vamp) wrote2004-09-03 09:01 pm
Entry tags:
Looking on the bright side
It's easier to remember the things that make me frustrated, and it's easier to gloss over classes that go smoothly by saying "everything went well," so I was thinking that maybe I might be reporting things rather unbalanced. I have to remember to report the good things too.
For example, for one of my classes today we played pictionary with various vocabulary words, and that went fine. The Active Listening teacher apparently talked with his sister yesterday, and she told him that she thought "discussion" was an inappropriate thing to teach in a class about listening, so he nixed that idea this morning. (Personally, I think that teaching the principles of intelligent discussion is quite appropriate to the topic of active listening, but maybe that's just me.) In any case, at least it's clear that he's putting a lot of serious thought into what to do for the class and he's open to listening to advice and brainstorming about it. That kind of flexibility is should be applauded, even though I wish it weren't at the last minute.
He did go with my idea to build off the textbook lesson (about 19th century British manufacturing of all things) by asking the students what they thought ideal jobs would be. They had some very interesting ideas, everything from "police" to "doctor" ("teacher" was also a favorite). Several girls cheerfully shouted out "single mother" as their ideal job, the little stinkers. The most popular job listed, however, was "Spiderman." ^_^ We then did a little poll asking about trying to balance money and happiness in a job, and asked them to judge the occupations they had listed for whether they would bring more money or more happiness or both. It worked pretty well as a warm-up, though there were a lot of students so it took a long time.
For example, for one of my classes today we played pictionary with various vocabulary words, and that went fine. The Active Listening teacher apparently talked with his sister yesterday, and she told him that she thought "discussion" was an inappropriate thing to teach in a class about listening, so he nixed that idea this morning. (Personally, I think that teaching the principles of intelligent discussion is quite appropriate to the topic of active listening, but maybe that's just me.) In any case, at least it's clear that he's putting a lot of serious thought into what to do for the class and he's open to listening to advice and brainstorming about it. That kind of flexibility is should be applauded, even though I wish it weren't at the last minute.
He did go with my idea to build off the textbook lesson (about 19th century British manufacturing of all things) by asking the students what they thought ideal jobs would be. They had some very interesting ideas, everything from "police" to "doctor" ("teacher" was also a favorite). Several girls cheerfully shouted out "single mother" as their ideal job, the little stinkers. The most popular job listed, however, was "Spiderman." ^_^ We then did a little poll asking about trying to balance money and happiness in a job, and asked them to judge the occupations they had listed for whether they would bring more money or more happiness or both. It worked pretty well as a warm-up, though there were a lot of students so it took a long time.