A poem a la Silverstein

In one of my ESL lessons we read a couple of poems by Shel Silverstein and my 12 year old student tried her hand at poetry inspired by his work. The results simply tickled me, here's a sample for you to see ;)

Untitled
I know I'm being a fool,
But I just can't go to school.
Although my friends are there,
My teacher's impossible to bear.
Oh, my darling mom,
Please stay calm;
For when you're mad,
It makes me so sad.
Fine, oh fine, I'll go.
But I will go slow.

In TEFL mode and to teach without 'teaching'

Today started with me trying to create a list of good links for learning English- Podcasts, lists and explanations of idioms, grammar explanations, etc. Despite there being so much out there, its so hard to find something that is perfectly relevant. So if you, dear reader, know of any podcast that would be perfect for beginners who want to learn terminology specific to "Narrative Psychology" or even Psychology in general, please send them my way. So far, the only ESL podcasts I found were slowed-down speech, discussing the US elections, how to get out of credit card debt and other equally interesting things for the potential immigrant to perhaps the US, but not for the people I have in mind. In addition, I think the sound stream was slowed down mechanically, so it sounded like I was listening to robots. I understand that when you speak slower, things are clearer to the beginner to the language, but the Podcasts did not sound like a good model for the eager student to learn pronunciation, for example. Oh well, I guess it will take me at least a week to compile a list of things that would be relevant, comprehensible and somewhere near the target language.

After a day of running around and teaching some classes, I went to Perekryostok (a psychology center that works with 'troubled teens') this evening to meet the teenagers that I want to start volunteering with. For them, it is an evening club where they play games, watch movies and listen to (or perform) music. The last person who tried to teach them English left frustrated because as soon as she mentioned the word "class," all the kids were either ill, too tired, or otherwise unavailable. Learning our lessons from the mistakes of others, the psychologists and I decided to not mention the C word again, focusing instead on introducing me as a volunteer who wants to be friends and participate in their activities, but who primarily speaks English. Its been nice enough so far, with all the kids smiling, saying hello and us watching a Spanish movie dubbed in Russian, probably called something along the lines of "The Fawn of the Labyrinth." Bizarre movie, but a pretty good opportunity to bond with some of the kids. So now I'm racking my brains for ways to bring English into the group, without there being any semblance of a class. Watching movies in English is one of the easiest things to try out. In addition, we can start with games such as Twister- something that requires minimal knowledge of English vocabulary. Apparently, the kids love bands like Nirvana and Slipknot, so I need to 1. find out who these guys are, 2. listen to their music, and then bring audio and text to the group. With some lyrics in hand, we can listen and try to work through the meanings of the songs.

So far, that's all I've got. Any suggestions of what else I could do? (and while we're at it, if you have great suggestions for activities with toddlers, send 'em my way too ;) ) I love this job that's all over the place- feels so much like the rest of my life!

First Day Jitters

Although I went to bed fairly late last night, I woke up really early today (6:30 am!). I think its because it will be my first day of Teaching English to toddlers (2 of them). The lesson is in the afternoon, but since I was awake and it's probably not a good thing to postpone everything to the very last minute anyway, I spent the first couple hours of this morning doing a little research and creating a lesson plan.

Update: The class went much better than I had thought it would. We almost abandoned the lesson plan- which was definitely the right thing to have done. The two mothers stayed in the room the entire time- a good thing, since the boy, when unable to wrestle a toy from the girl, burst into tears. Twice. The girl was preoccupied with a guitar for most of the first half of the lesson. Nonetheless, they enjoyed the singing and dancing ("Here we go 'round the mulberry bush" was particularly popular) and by the end of class, both had said a few words in English. Who would have thought I'd be working with toddlers, without it being a complete disaster?!