April 11, 2012

Ms. Austin warned me the week before that today’s class maybe light. Many of the students had children. The children’s spring break was this week. The women didn’t have baby sitters so they had to stay at home.  Well, she was right. There were only a total of five students. Ms. Austin started the class differently today. Today we were going to read some stories. Before we read the stories we were going to look up words that could be problematic and define them. Ms. Austin said I could help explain the meaning of the words. It wasn’t bad. The words weren’t terrible. One example of the words was prophecy. The one word that was hard for me to explain was species. I had no clue how to define that. My definition I gave to them was a cousin of animals. They are the same kind of animal. I used dogs as an example. There is the animal dog but dogs are broken into different types.  I said it was like a family. Cousins are related, but they aren’t immediate family. Ms. Austin said although I struggled with that word, I did well with explaining it.  When dealing with a big group, it’s hard to balance the students. I wanted to give everyone the same amount of attention and help. I wanted them to help each other, but they were kind of separated. Well, Jumi, who could speak English, was by herself.  I had to make sure I wasn’t being bias and spread my help around.  After defining all the words, we read the story as a big group together.  Ms. Austin went around in the circle and had each of them read a section of the story. After wards, we answered the questions to see if they knew the answer. I liked the way class was conducted. I felt the class was together as oppose to being separated.  I asked Ms. Austin how I was doing, if there was anything she wanted me to do differently. She was happy with how I taught. She said I look for different ways to teach and that I understand them. She also said I am very patient.