LESSON 1: It takes me longer than I'd anticipated to "settle in" for my lessons...
Although I'm not very good at Chinese, I do generally try to be a good student; I do my homework with my coloured pens, my lessons are in my diary and I always look at the PowerPoint from Teacher Wei in advance. At uni, I'd always be one of the first to be eagerly waiting outside the lecture hall. Also, I'm a bit of a rocket (in life and when I teach) - I get cracking very quickly and move on quickly. BUT - something weird has happened to me as a remote learner, and I wonder if my students feel like this. For some reason, I suddenly feel extremely disorganised / overwhelmed / not ready / nervous right before my lesson, and all logical thought goes out of the window. Even though I prepared the night before, as soon as I click the Zoom link, I'm painfully aware that I've forgotten how to say ni hao and I suddenly realise I don't have a drink, I haven't been to the toilet, my notebooks aren't in the right place, and I feel generally "unsettled".
Now I've unpicked how I've been feeling, I also realise how much subtle help Teacher Wei has been giving me. At the start of the lesson, instead of just diving into the lesson, Teacher Wei always makes time to have a little chat to warm me up. I guess it's like a pre-starter activity. I always struggle because it's been a week since I last spoke Chinese, but just talking about "what did you do last weekend" in a calm, slow manner really helps. From this, I think Teacher Wei can judge how I'm feeling and then she can steer the lesson in the most helpful direction.
I think I'll need a more carefully thought out start to my lessons than I'd anticipated. And with 250+ students, it's making me think about the tools I can use to settle my students, to judge how they are feeling, and to make sure they don't feel silly or anxious if they are still "settling in" after five or ten minutes.
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