Wednesday, March 7, 2012

I am thankful for: student enthusiasm

I don't know if it's just me, but it seems as though most students are not very enthusiastic. They are when we prepare good lessons, when we give them exciting projects, when we project tons of energy, but very few are naturally enthusiastic when they sit down for yet another lesson of this or that, so that it requires a constant effort to motivate them. 

I have been subbing for an English teacher for a bit over a month and one of her classes has been working on a project which she had developped with another teacher last year. The students have just handed in the written reports, and I have not had time to read them, but yesterday and today they had their oral presentations. 

Since the class is rather big (31 students) and they each had to give a 3-4 minute presentation I decided they would give it only to me, not to the entire class. I couldn't see them sitting there quietly listening to one presentation after another for two double periods and I hate when students talk while other students present. (I hate when they talk while I talk, but talking when a fellow student is presenting is, in my books, one worst offenses I can think of. It drives me crazy).  

So I sat in a room close to the classroom, having given them an assigment to work on, and listened to one fantasting presentation after another. I couldn't believe the quality of their work (in most cases), but what struck me most was how much enthusiasm they showed. Of course it is a testament to a very well thought out project, and it was inspiring to see how much it had motivated them. And in all honesty, I thought it was hard and really long, but clearly they took it to heart the results were amazing. So I am thankful for having learned from my fellow teachers, and for being lucky enough to witness so much positive energy from students.

(For those of you who are teachers or just curious, here was the project: Work or Study Abroad. They had to pick an English speaking country, and then decide if they wanted to study or work there. Then they had to find a school/job, look a the requirements, write the application essay/job application, a CV, write about the country/city they were going to, the geography, social conditions etc, look into visas, scholarships, English tests, any paperwork necessary, make a budget, look at the cost of living, plane tickets and anything else, and then they had to explain why they wanted to do this, what would be the challenges etc.

It was a huge amount of work, but even though it was "pretend", quite a few students were really inspired by what they had seen and realized that they had actually done most of the work, so some of them are really considering applying after they graduate from high school (next year).)

1 comment:

  1. Really interesting post Moira, thanks :-)

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