May 11, 2009

It’s starting to get warmer here.  I left the house at 7:20 in the morning so I could get to school without being too rushed. 

As soon as I got to the school and found Professor Monaci I was like, “Ready?”  He was like, “No.”  I just gave him a smile and said encouragingly, “Lets go do some good!”   The day didn’t start out too bad.  He started out the 4^th class with a, “If you don’t shut up I’ll double your homework!”  I was like, “Good, good, this is an improvement!”  We had four guests in the class.  They were some more of the American exchange students from California.  The teacher asked the students to divide themselves into four groups.  Man, this was so funny to watch.  Everyone looked like the teacher had just said something to them in a foreign language and then they sort of just moved their desks into two great big lopsided blobs.  There was confusion everywhere and everyone was talking and yelling at each other.  Then the teacher joined in yelling at them and said if you guys don’t fix this in two minutes I’ll give you more homework.  Finally he just got up and divided them himself.  What did I learn from this?  1. Go through a good TESOL program like the one at BYU where they teach you basic things like how to explain your directions clearly and preparing premeditated groups before hand. 2. Make sure that if you want to make a group on the spot you point out where the separations should be made clearly.  3. Always stay in control of the class. 

So after that was over the teacher was taking roll and as it turned out everyone was in class that day.  Professor Monaci said, “Everyone is here today?  Oh how sad!”  While the students did their conversation, Professor M taught me how he grades essay questions.  The 5^th class had done an essay test exam and he was using that to show me how he grades the questions.  He looks at three different things: knowledge, capacity, and competence.  He was trying to explain to me what each one means but I didn’t really understand.  It’s hard sometimes to understand him sometimes because he has such a thick Italian accent and the English he learned is British English. 

The next class that we taught was a 3^nd class.  The first thing I saw was a boy in the front row with a shirt that said jackass.  I was like, “hmm, that’s nice.”  Its so funny seeing kids with shirts and belts that say things like f**k and other nice things.  Its sort of random and since it doesn’t mean anything to them its shocking sometimes.  In this class we also had the American students so we had another hour of conversation.  This class however had a much better grasp on what “groups” meant and they were able to do it themselves like big kids.  I was quite proud of them.  I walked around and listened to their conversations.  This is the class that has the boy who dresses like a hippie and I found out that he’s actually in the student’s rights committee.  That made me smile. 

After this hour Professor M had his parent hour.  Once a week each teacher has a certain hour where parents can come and discuss any concerns that they might have about their children.  Two mothers showed up for his hour.  I sat in and listened to some of their concerns.  The first mother’s daughter isn’t doing so well in class.  She’s always afraid to open her mouth and when it comes time to performing she just says she can’t and she doesn’t even try.  Professor M. had a chance to explain this to the mom.  The mom had questions about how he graded and he opened up his grade book and showed the mom exactly how he did it and all of the grades that her daughter had gotten up until then.  The second mom met with the Professor for just a bit.  Her daughter is in the 5^th class and is doing fairly well. The mom just wanted to see what her daughter could improve on.  I think that it’s so helpful that the teachers have this time for the parents to come.  Its great that some parents actually take advantage of the opportunity and that they are actually concerned over their children’s education.  As I was listening to the conference I was looking around the room, which was the library.  This library is always locked up so the kids have to ask permission to get in.  This to me seems wrong.  I was thinking about how the school closes right as soon as classes are over.  This also seems sort of wrong.  The school should provide students a place where they can go to study.  I think every student at every age should have a quiet study place where they can learn to focus and concentrate.  Good study habits are very difficult to learn especially for children with disabilities or disadvantages but if parents would start teaching kids from a very young age these things then maybe they would have an easier time putting them into practice. 

The next hour we taught a class from the 2^nd class.  Professor M. just went in there and started a grammar lecture on relative pronouns.  I have yet to see the professor use any sort of lesson plan or teaching program for his classes.  On the first day he told me how important it is for him to be flexible in his teaching but that just makes it really hard for me to follow or prepare for class.  During the lecture he sort of just sat up there on the teachers desk and spoke to the class as if preaching a sermon to a bunch of sheep.  There is absolutely no connecting or engaging with the students.  There were no slides or writing on the board, NOTHING!  I was having such a hard time staying awake and the students just fidgeted the whole class; it was so hard for them to stay focused and interested.  I think that if the teacher would just walk around even a little bit and made some more eye contact to see if they were really following then the students would get so much more out of it.  But for some reason this doesn’t seem to be the Italian tradition. 

The last class that we taught was the 5^th class.  In the beginning of class Professor M. gave them the results to their essay questions that they had two weeks before.  Then for the whole class period there was an interrogation of one student on the poems of Seamus Heaney.  They were supposed to have read and understood the poems and it was this girl’s turn to be interrogated.  I think she did fairly well but I had to listen closely to be able to understand because the pronunciation was so bad.  Prof. M told me that Italian students usually do very well at written tests but on their oral tests and listening tests they do poorly.

I think that it is so good for me to see all of these differences.  I feel like I’m learning a lot and that’s good because that’s what I came to do.