Into the belly of the beast

I'm teaching tomorrow. Teaching actual students! I'm trying to keep a lid on my excitement, but this is definitely coupled with more than a slight bit of apprehension and, dare I say it, fear. I know that I've taught real students before, but that was years ago and most of that experience has been lost in the mists of time. This is proper teaching with students who are expecting the best. I don't know whether it helps that I know the students I'm teaching or not. On the plus side, I think I'll be less nervous but on the minus side, I know that I've got a few cheeky ones in there so I fervently hope they don't play me up! I think I'll have to rule with an iron fist if anything like that happens, but, if I'm honest, I don't think that's my style. I've told/warned them that I'll be teaching them on Thursday and that they have to be in school so I hope everyone turns up and doesn't take the opportunity to have a day off.

I've planned my lesson with the help of the TESOL teachers here at A+ and they've approved what I've written, so now it's just a case of making my materials and thinking about some cracking elicitation and concept-checking questions. It's a functional lesson around problems and giving advice and I've written a plan that centres around agony aunts and the sort of problems people write to them with. When I was given the subject I was aware that it could stir up a few bad memories for some people so I've tried to make it as light-hearted as possible. I'm going to start the lesson by projecting an agony aunt page on the wall as some students may not have agony aunts in their own countries and I thought that showing them might be helpful. I've created an agony aunt page out of necessity as I trawled the internet for one I could use only to be confronted with a range of very personal problems. I imagined myself projecting one of those on the wall and the looks on the students' faces and, after that consideration, I saved everyone's blushes and wrote one of my own! I'm also creating an activity with laminates of different problems and solutions. I'm going to instruct them to find the person with the solution to their problem and give advice to someone else's problem so they can see a range of responses and learn different language structures. I'm going to follow this with an activity where they write their own problems, then swap them and write back as an agony aunt. Hopefully I'll get some entertaining answers back!