Digging Deep

We are starting to feel like a baseball team late in a heated game. Our bullpen has been drained and reserves are growing few in number. It has been a hard fought course, but our stamina is beginning to give way. The time following our trip has gone by in a whirlwind. We hit the ground running and have had little time to look back. Many things have been very difficult, but we have learned a lot. We can also tell that we are being worked on and prepared for things ahead.Shortly after we returned, we began teaching two groups of Mongolian English teachers. The goal of the classes has been to prepare as many of our students to be able to enter the higher level training program this coming fall. Unfortunately, our classes have taken a real hit. Many of the students that we started with have dropped the course. We are now down to 16 students between the two classes. Our goal is to challenge them, make them talk, and help improve their individual skills. The small sizes have allowed for more one-on-one interaction. We have some great students and want to help them as much as we can.

All of our students are women, so it is a little easier for Jennifer to interact with them. However, through talking with them in class and through their homework assignments, we have all been able to learn many things about them and tell them more about us.
We team teach between the two classes and share the teaching load among three of us. Jennifer prefers to teach the lower level students, and Joshua enjoys the challenge of teaching the higher level students.
Sometimes Joshua likes to "help" Jennifer while she is teaching, but she doesn't care for that at all. Actually, we were just modeling something for our students. Many times we have to act out what we are teaching to help them understand better. We always knew those years of charades would come in handy some day!We want the students to talk as much as possible and communicate in English. As we have well learned, it is one thing to know a language but another thing to communicate in it. We want our students to be comfortable communicating in English so that they can better teach their students. It is a lot of fun to listen and observe the activities. Sometimes there is no telling what we will hear. Our two-week practicum class last semester gave us a whole toolbox of speaking structures to use in the classroom. It gives us a variety of options and can be very entertaining for our students. Who said that class had to be boring? Of course, we usually jump in as well. We don't want our students to have ALL the fun!Sometimes it can be challenging to help the students understand the lesson point or the activities. We are constantly evaluating how to present the material in the way best suited to our student's level.

These classes have been a real learning experience for everybody. We have seen improvement in many of our students, and we have been challenged to teach better. Somedays we just have to stop and remind ourselves that this is still our rookie season. Many things have been difficult. It has provided many occasions for doubt and discouragement. However, I was recently reminded that we don't have to be perfect; we just have to be faithful in what we are doing and do it with all we got for the glory of our Father. With this under our caps, we are preparing for the final push of the semester. We want to finish well.

With all of this in mind, we have felt it necessary to make some organizational changes in our classes for the rest of the school year. The details are complicated, we are still trying to figure them all out, but if all works out we will be able to better encourage and challenge each of our students appropriate to their individual levels.