David-co3

6/5/2012

I had really been wanting to attend one of Alena's classes for one of my observations because I theorized that perhaps it would give me more of an insight to how she does in her classes.  Since listening was her weakest subject I decided to attend that class.  Her teacher was Olga Garmish and immediately I noticed something different about the way that Olga spoke English.  It didn't happen often but every once in a while I would notice her accent on certain words would be different than a native speakers would.  I concluded immediately that this teacher was not English born and based on her accent figured that she was Russian.  Asking after class did confirm this to be true.

The topic during class was perhaps the most interesting that I have sat in on, but one that I felt could have been over the students heads.  I am not an expert in teaching or in judging this, so when I say this I am purely speaking from my point of view.  The topic was filling in worksheets that had to do with a movie they had recently watched.  The movie was Inception.  Yes I am talking about the recent physiological thriller that stared Leonardo Decaprio.  In the first place I am not even sure I understand all this movie and have seen it 3 times and am a native English speaker.  So I was really wondering how this level 2 listening class was going to do with it.

I really enjoyed this movie so at the very least I was very excited to talk about it.  I sat in the corner and observed alone till one of the students chose to sit next to me.  They spent much of the class going over a few different worksheets  that they had for the class and I not only got to observe the teacher but how Alena did.  It was interesting to see, but it seemed that most of the students in the class were more advanced than her in both speaking and listening from the questions I heard her answer.  It just rang true to the fact that even if you are able to break up classes into 8 levels or more you are still going to have multilevel classes.  I guess that is the challenge in our job and how we relate to that.

Overall I really enjoyed the topic and the class, but I note that the subject may have been over the heads of the class because of their discussion abilities and the complex nature of this movie. This was a hard movie for me.  I was also able to gage where Alena was in relation to other students which really makes me believe that I am going to be able to help her better.  I thanked Olga for letting me join the class and left for the lounge.