Week in review

This isn’t a running-related post – the only words related to running are "I haven’t" – but what the heck. The lack of it will help me put on a few wanted pounds.

I’ve been teaching English at summer school all week. I haven’t done summer school before, so it’s a nice bit of a change. While I was previously lamenting about the various bits and pieces of work I have to do because I don’t work in a "proper" full-time job in a school, I learnt that 50% of the people in the UK work like me. The trendy term for it is "going portfolio" – choosing the various bits of work you want to do, instead of signing up with an employer and bequeathing them with the rest of the working time of your life. The downside to portfolio-ing is the financial aspect; the upside is a greater freedom and flexibility to be in control of what you do. One thing I wondered was, are things like this across the Atlantic? Do people do various jobs for work, or is there the preference for organizations? Go on, help a curious pig see beyond the farm gates...

Anyway, summer school is part of my portfolio. My students at summer school are from various countries and of ages 10 – 16. There are about 12 students (although it will vary from week to week). It’s a funny sort of group really. You get the younger kids who are still interested in the “cute” things and laugh at really trivial, slapstick stuff. Then there are the older teenage kids who are going through their “life sucks” phase; grumpy just about everything, and the more mature kids. Throw in various levels of competency and it’s a funny mix. Teaching languages to non-native speakers requires a different skill. Instructions have to be simple, you have to watch what you say, and in your planning you have to think and mentally rehearse your lesson through for possible weak spots. The trend is also to avoid the blackboard and dry grammatical stuff, but to think of activities and games that actually get students to use the target language, then explain the grammar. And hopefully watch the students’ faces go “Oh…!” (Well, some of my students' faces either go “What?”, “Why did my parents send me here”, or “I learnt this last year!”) And you can’t take anything for granted. I kept using examples of a similar nature until one student, exasperated, asked, “Excuse me, what is ‘dog’?”

I have just about spent every spare hour preparing stuff. Not healthy, I know, but with the extra hours I’ve put in I’m nearly a week ahead in preparations, so I can coast a bit next week and have a bit of breathing space. I knew summer school would be like this, with your time away from work spent preparing, so I’m not surprised. And after school I have to teach music at home in the evenings, so time is a premium.

A week off running was in the big scheme of things. I'm getting back on track with the important things next week.

Like running and blog-reading.