Newspaper: The Class

My director is asking me for help in selecting textbooks for the upcoming Winter Highly Intensive Period for Ferocious Underage Koreans (Whipfuk).

I get the feeling that this is a “Throw him a bone” responsibility, something my director is having me do because she thinks I need more to do.  I honestly don’t know why she asked me to do it.  But whatever.  I’ve seen a lot of books.  I can pick ‘em as well as most.

So I went in to her office with suggestions.  She shot them down.  “How about we just use the newspaper?” she said.  “Students read and discuss the newspaper using TOEFL speaking and writing skills.”

- First of All -

No.

That isn’t a very good idea.  How I actually responded was, “Yeah, maybe.”  Which is how I say no when I’m cornered by my boss.

Teaching an intensive TOEFL course isn’t easy.  You’ve got to cover a number of tasks in a relatively short amount of time if you want to make the class worthwhile.

Well, personally, I think TOEFL prep is a bit of a waste of time to begin with, but I can get behind teaching the skills that are represented on the test.  If you want to be a student using English, you’ve got to be able to write a coherent essay and you’ve got to be able to understand reading/listening passages and be able to talk/write about those passages.  That’s what the TOEFL is all about, and I have no problem teaching it.

Anyways, I don’t want to get started on the TOEFL.  I’m writing a pretty lengthy paper for college about why the test is hurting students.  I don’t need to do a repeat performance on this blog.

So my director wants to use an easy-to-read newspaper as the basis for a class.  We’re not talking about the Wall Street Journal here.  Rather, a newspaper written specifically for English language students.  It has some pertinent topics for Korean students and is easy to do.  Reading and vocab-wise, this decision seems sound, because it targets the right reading level.  And talking about current events is sometimes fun.

However, a newspaper doesn’t provide any help for the teacher about how/what to teach.  Yeah, vocabulary, grammar, etc., but what about the skills students should be using/practicing?  The teacher of the class will have to prepare those on a daily basis, which is a tall order for a lot of teachers at my academy.

Which means I’ll have to help them do it.

I’m not trying to blow smoke up my own ass.  As far as teachers go, I’m a novice, but I can take a set of writing/speaking tasks and design lessons around them.  I can do this without even thinking at this point.  But I’ve been hip-deep in TOEFL for 18 months and have lesson ideas pouring out my ass.  Other teachers haven’t been teaching that long and can’t recite the six different integrated and independent speaking tasks from memory.

Anyways, I don’t really want to help a teacher do that.  It’d be easier just to use a book that already has some handy exercises in it.  That cuts the prep time dramatically and lightens the load for a teacher who has even less experience than I have.

I might have no choice in the matter.  Which begs the question, Why did my director ask me to choose the books? Perhaps she just wants me to see the tough decisions she has to make.

Well, I already know she has tough decisions.  Being a director of an academy is a lot of fucking work.  98% of the time my director is run ragged.  2% of the time she’s asleep.  But, hey.  That’s why she makes the big bucks.