Blues and Berries

Back blip

I got a text from my colleague in Zurich this morning at 6.45am telling me that she thought our weak candidate had withdrawn. I was just getting up.  He'd sent an email to us both during the night saying he would be withdrawing, but also attaching his lesson plan for the lesson he was due to teach at 8am - hence the slight doubt.  I was meant to be observing him teach at 8am so I had to spring into action and get the trainee who was due to teach the 2nd hour to teach the 1st hour and then set something up for the 2nd hour with the other non-teaching trainees helping out. In other centres, we'd have just finished the class early as they're free for those students, but not in Switzerland!  Then I had to get into the Zoom room early to catch the trainees to tell them what had happened and at 8.03 (the class starts at 8am), two students had already been in touch with my Zurich-based colleague saying they couldn't get into Zoom!  We have 10 students and they're super punctual....nothing like classes in Cairo or Barcelona! 

After all that and feedback on the first lesson, I gave an input session on Stress and Intonation.  I was distracted and have to be honest and say that it wasn't my best session - it felt disorganised and at one point I couldn't share a site when I wanted to share my screen and so ended up having to give lengthy instructions, which I'd have frowned upon had I been observing. Then I gave the wrong link to a Jamboard in the chat box to one group of trainees and had to 'repair'.  Ho hum.  

I have to say that I'm super impressed by the ease with which this group of trainees use Zoom and all its functions - much better than the last group.   All the lessons are well-structured and they show competent classroom management skills.  What's missing though (and what the last group had!) is responding to the Ss in a natural way - I think they're all scared that their TTT (teacher talking time) will increase - and low TTT is something that's drummed into them from day 1!  My FB to them today and yesterday was all about how to exploit little opportunities throughout the lessons to engage with the Ss.  The load will be lighter now though with not having to worry about someone struggling on and failing the course.  Such a lot of money to lose though, especially those days.