 Re: Do you team teach?
I'm the one who wrote earlier about my classes in Viet Nam, and liking the system. Having just read the article Chris Cotter has linked in, the system in my school can hardly be called team teaching, but since writing earlier, I've had an experience I'd like to add. I've just had my second class with a co-teacher who is more of a distraction than a help. During my first lesson, I hung the poster supplied for the unit we were working on, and asked the students as a start-off, "What can you see?" Before anyone could answer the other teacher jumped up and started pointing and saying, "What's this?" She covered half the poster like this (before handing over for me to finish the other side) and explained to me that this would give them controlled vocab practice. Well, yes, but maybe I was going to give them free practice. Tonight she was wandering around the class, getting into discussions with the kids - presumably to do with the lesson; I don't know, it was all in Vietnamese, but then she would come and write an English word or phrase on the board - and I had to keep waiting for her conversations to die down a bit before calling for quiet to go onto the next thing. I have only been teaching 6 months, and I am not a trained teacher, having only studied a 150 hour TEFL course, so I know I'm inexperienced, but I don't think I've been doing too badly. As a young local, she may well be an educational studies student or graduate, so I feel confused as well as frustrated. Even if the way she's co-teaching is wrong (I'm sure it is), does she have a point? Am I teaching wrongly myself? (I went back and looked again at the teacher's book for the poster, and it definitely says, as the first poster activity: "Invite students to name all the ... words they can.")
Sorry, this may sound like a Dear Abby letter, but it feels good to write it down! I just wanted a bit of a moan, I guess.  |