I’m sure a lot of you are interested in teaching and probably already have lots of experience. But for me I don’t have a lot of experience and this was a great learning moment for me!
Last semester I took a class that was about teaching theory, but was also a service learning class. Every week we spent one hour studying different philosophies about teaching and the next hour was spent making lesson plans for Saturday. On Saturday mornings we would go to a Brazilian church in Springfield and give Portuguese lessons to kids of the congregation (who were all heritage speakers). By far, one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome was motivating the kids. They were all wonderful kids, kind, well behaved, but they just did not want to be there. They would tell us bluntly that they did not want to be there and they did not want to do any work. As a teacher, I had no idea how to respond to that. I understood their sentiments and I felt bad for them–there I was, standing there in front of these tired 12 year olds on a Saturday morning, looking foolish with these worksheets and vocabulary lists in my hands. Of course they wouldn’t want to do them. What kid would? Continue reading