How to learn.

The second half of the academic year here in middle school is an ideal time for me to study Korean. I find myself falling back into old habits that I had in high school. In high school I actually didn't spend that much time studying, but strangely enough I did exceptionally well. What was I doing in high school? Reading voraciously. And not my school books either. I read stuff that my mom and I took out from the library each week, so basically thrillers, crime, that kind of thing. If I hadn't had pulp fiction with me in study hall I'd have gone mad! For me the incentive to getting my homework or studying done quickly was to get back to the story I was reading. Actually though that meant my brain was totally alert all the time and firing on all cylinders. Of course I had to read my storybooks discreetly. Go figure. So nowadays I actually don't read that much any more ... It breaks my heart to tell the truth, but staying with the point I'm trying to get to: I spend a lot of time on the internet. A lot. Really a lot. It's very consuming. Now what makes it fun to be hanging out on the internet is that actually to my right there is my "Teach Yourself Korean" book, looking neglected, and infusing me with the tiniest hint of guilt. I should be studying lesson nine! But actually, I have been studying lesson nine, and because I do it once I get way too bored with the internet, it goes so so quickly. The thing is, I think in high school I read books and now I play on the internet because you can take in a bit of learning at a time, but then you've gotta abandon it for something fun. It's like eating. You can't eat all day long 'cos your stomach needs a bit of time to process stuff, plus it has a limited capacity. Just like your brain. So here's my advice: always do something fun while you're studying, and alternate between the fun stuff and the learning stuff. After a while you won't be able to tell which is which : )

Triumph!

For some weeks now certain students in my 'last slot on a Friday' class have been ... uhm ... shall we say .... "challenging"... to manage. But today I feel as if my patience in the past has paid off. My strategy in classroom management is often to find the focus of disruptions. Usually it's one or two students who have fallen into the habit of thinking they 'can't do' English. To hide their insecurity at what they perceive to be their incompetence, they totally act out. After a while it becomes so predictable. So now I pre-empt their disruptive lack of attention by focusing on them all the time, and right from the start of the class. That look on their faces which says: "Oh no, here she comes comes again!" is priceless : ) But the thing is I'm totally nice to them. Whenever I need a 'volunteer' to write stuff on the board, or to roleplay a dialogue, or whatever, it's the same person or persons I choose again and again until they figure out that I'm not gonna ignore their habitual bad behaviour and that the consequence of their bad behaviour is that they will have to work twice as hard as everyone else in class. Here's looking forward to next Friday afternoon : )

Teaching teachers.

Here is a short and cryptic thought: isn't every teacher a teacher of teachers? When I happen to observe my students 'helping' each other, even though actually I'm not asking for a collaborative effort, I think to myself: each student is a teacher in potentia, but also actually a teacher for real ... 'cos they're teaching themselves every day. Good teachers are good 'masters' of themselves: they can survive fatigue and boredom and force themselves to go on concentrating. By their example, kids learn to stop fidgeting, teenagers begin eventually to ignore their peers and pay attention in the classroom, and college students train their brains to absorb and store info quickly and reliably. So the 'best' teachers out there are those who teach others how to 'master' themselves. The only way to learn this self-mastery is to watch and be inspired by someone else who has clearly risen to a level of comfortable self-discipline: for a good teacher attention comes easily and understanding follows quickly.