A pleasure to teach

I just had a last minute class. At 7pm after the homework class, Sobhanajoti asked me to take the junior and senior class together. They were both working on different things, the seniors were working on writing a letter to Sayardaw explaining the current status of a real library project, currently being orchestrated by a group of foreign teachers. I have been trying to get them to use English authentically and meaningfully as they often learn grammar and vocabulary in isolation (text-book style) and therefore don't know how to use it. I received an email about a week ago from Debra, another Australian teacher who had taught here previously and who is returning soon and who is working on building a community library here, briefly explaining the project to me. I also later received her forwarded email from a Dr Peter someone rather who was in transit in Chennai (from his Iphone) who explained the requirements and steps they need to take: like establishing charity status in the host country with the help of AusAid, obtaining Myanmar government approval for the international transfer of donations and a requirement that the entire community must benefit from the library.

So I wrote a letter introducing the library project which the senior students had to read aloud (and learn vocab, register, structure of a formal letter etc). Then from the forwarded email from Dr Peter I created a situational writing task in which they needed to write a letter to Sayardaw explaining the current status and requirements of the project. The senior students said they wanted to practise speaking today, so instead of writing the letter, I got the senior students to explain to the junior students the same thing but through speaking: about the proposal and the steps that needed to be taken to achieve it. They did this with some difficulty but the junior students later answered oral comprehension questions about the senior's speech and they could answer - so they conveyed their meaning successfully!

The junior students had been working on a speech about Myanmar. I wrote a speech about my impressions of Myanmar which started: "Rudyard Kipling once wrote: 'This is Burma and it will be quite unlike any land you know about'... Then, after reading my speech (& analysing vocab etc), they wrote a speech about Myanmar beginning with the same first line. I gave them some phrases to use and scaffolded and editing their writing as they wrote. So, the junior students needed to read their speeches to the senior students.

It was an amazing lesson! It worked so well because the junior and senior students wanted to impress each other. The monks are ideal students: they collaborate well, they encourage each other, they laugh and its so fun to teach them. I wish I could teach them full-time. They are just lovely.