Sunday, April 04, 2004
If I were the teacher...
I kind of find it depressing that everything I've seen fit to write about during this, my long weekend, 4 blissfully free days, has all been about work. On the other hand, it's all been work-related stuff that I actually care about, so it was fun. What does this indicate about my brain?
It's strange how teaching can come to take over so much of a person's cognitive processes. I find myself becoming hyper-aware of the constructions I use when I speak, of all these amazing people around me who can just *use* the conditional like it's nothing, who can switch tenses and from first to third person without great thought, who know how to use the general "you" properly, who, and this is the most amazing thing of all, can use articles, sprinkling them liberally, willy-nilly, appropriately through their everyday conversations! When I was in Japan, I once found myself listening to some cheesy Japanese pop song with English in the chorus, and realizing that the chorus was actually the singers going through all the conjugations of "like," from first person to third person plural, just as they had learned in school.
On Friday, I was watching a rerun of MacGyver to fulfill my quota of silly TV during vacation, and at the end there was an ad for the website for the Lewis & Clark bicentennial. I picked up the computer to check it out, and in the next hour of surfing related links, I had ideas for the whole next unit I now plan to do with my ELC class after we finish the current book about living on another planet. What's more, the two units can dovetail nicely to link the hypothetical and future conditional, which I just taught them for the space unit, with the past conditional. ("If I had been in Lewis & Clark's company, I would have taken...) Everything I read, I end up evaluating its merit as authentic reading material for my classes. Could I turn this into a lesson? What parts of it would be hard for them to understand? Wow, I never realized how culturally-laden all the images in that song are, etc., etc.
Lest you start to feel sorry for me, I admit that I started working on the final project for my methods class for fun. I'm going to be developing content-based materials for use in an ESL setting. I will never get to teach this class; it's all just a speculative exercise. But do I care? No. I spent $80 on books for this class I'll never get to teach. I have enough material to write 4 semester's worth of curricula, all based around mystery stories. Did you ever realize how much study and analysis there has been of Nancy Drew? Certainly a lot more than I would have thought. And now several books' worth is mine, all mine. Mwahahaha...
My mom says I should try to write up my curriculum fully and get it published. I even have a truly corny - I mean, catchy name for it. I won't tell you, though, because you might steal my idea. My own, my precioussss... *snaps back to reality* Right, I'm not obsessed with this at the moment, not at all. Nope, not me.
All you people who have talked to me in the past week may just be quiet now. Thank you.
I kind of find it depressing that everything I've seen fit to write about during this, my long weekend, 4 blissfully free days, has all been about work. On the other hand, it's all been work-related stuff that I actually care about, so it was fun. What does this indicate about my brain?
It's strange how teaching can come to take over so much of a person's cognitive processes. I find myself becoming hyper-aware of the constructions I use when I speak, of all these amazing people around me who can just *use* the conditional like it's nothing, who can switch tenses and from first to third person without great thought, who know how to use the general "you" properly, who, and this is the most amazing thing of all, can use articles, sprinkling them liberally, willy-nilly, appropriately through their everyday conversations! When I was in Japan, I once found myself listening to some cheesy Japanese pop song with English in the chorus, and realizing that the chorus was actually the singers going through all the conjugations of "like," from first person to third person plural, just as they had learned in school.
On Friday, I was watching a rerun of MacGyver to fulfill my quota of silly TV during vacation, and at the end there was an ad for the website for the Lewis & Clark bicentennial. I picked up the computer to check it out, and in the next hour of surfing related links, I had ideas for the whole next unit I now plan to do with my ELC class after we finish the current book about living on another planet. What's more, the two units can dovetail nicely to link the hypothetical and future conditional, which I just taught them for the space unit, with the past conditional. ("If I had been in Lewis & Clark's company, I would have taken...) Everything I read, I end up evaluating its merit as authentic reading material for my classes. Could I turn this into a lesson? What parts of it would be hard for them to understand? Wow, I never realized how culturally-laden all the images in that song are, etc., etc.
Lest you start to feel sorry for me, I admit that I started working on the final project for my methods class for fun. I'm going to be developing content-based materials for use in an ESL setting. I will never get to teach this class; it's all just a speculative exercise. But do I care? No. I spent $80 on books for this class I'll never get to teach. I have enough material to write 4 semester's worth of curricula, all based around mystery stories. Did you ever realize how much study and analysis there has been of Nancy Drew? Certainly a lot more than I would have thought. And now several books' worth is mine, all mine. Mwahahaha...
My mom says I should try to write up my curriculum fully and get it published. I even have a truly corny - I mean, catchy name for it. I won't tell you, though, because you might steal my idea. My own, my precioussss... *snaps back to reality* Right, I'm not obsessed with this at the moment, not at all. Nope, not me.
All you people who have talked to me in the past week may just be quiet now. Thank you.
