Kelly CO #1

My first classroom observation was a very interesting experience. I signed up to observe Angel’s group 4 speaking class, but after I arrived and was sitting with the students waiting for him, a substitute teacher came in and explained that Angel had to leave for an emergency. I explained to the substitute that I was a TEFL student who had arranged to observe, and asked her if she minded if I stayed to watch. (Since I was already there and had nothing to do for the next hour anyway I figured why not?) She said that she just found out she would be teaching the class about ten minutes ago and thus was not very prepared. I told her that any type of observation would be helpful for me, and then the class got underway.

The lesson revolved around the basic organization of an oral speech (introduction with a thesis statement, body, conclusion, ways to keep the audience’s attention), which wasn’t too different to what I’ve been learning in my speech class this semester. The class was smaller than I expected at eight students. The teacher asked a lot of questions to which the students were fairly responsive.

Halfway into the lesson, a student walked in visibly upset and the teacher reprimanded him for being late. About ten minutes later when the teacher asked the aforementioned student to participate, he angrily responded that he did not feel comfortable participating because of being scolded in front of the class. The teacher responded that it’s her job to hold the students responsible, and they subsequently got in a slight verbal argument during which the student made some rude statements. While it was fairly uncomfortable to witness, I was very impressed by how the substitute teacher handled herself. On top of having to come in and teach an unfamiliar class at the last minute, she also managed to keep her cool while dealing with a student who was giving her a hard time.

While I was originally disappointed that this observation wouldn’t count toward my “3 observations” because the regular teacher didn’t show up, I ended up being glad that I was able to witness how the substitute teacher handled herself in this uncomfortable situation.