TESL & more

No, don't worry, I'm not writing in tongues with the title of the post. TESL stands for Teaching English as a Second Language.

I had my first class last night (it's one of those one day a week for nearly three hour courses), and sounds like it is going to be a good class. There are supposed to be about twenty-three people in the class, but I think there were only about twenty there last night. Not sure if the others ended up dropping the class or if they just didn't show up.

Anyway, there are three books we are using, one is a grammar workbook which the prof wants us to use to help build our own grammar skills. It will also help us with the teaching of English. The other two are the texts we will read and use as the course goes on, though I haven't started reading them yet.

Each week we will have a two page (double spaced) essay of sorts to write and hand in the following week, as well as some sort of worksheet that we have to make up. The worksheet needs to be made up in such a way as though you were presenting it to a certain level (such as beginning learners of English, advanced, in between, etc.). The prof is going to have a sample on line for us to follow along with a couple of examples (which he's supposed to put on some time today). I'm not really following what we are to do for that just yet, but I think once I see the examples it will help. Also, I think reading the book will help with it as well so once I get the chapters read it should become more clear to me.

The other class I had yesterday afternoon was Effective Writing. If you want to read a bit about that, you will find my write up on my writing blog, Ink Scrawls (click the title of the blog to take you there).

I felt really odd yesterday at school. I felt like I shouldn't be there because I have already graduated. I saw some people that I know, but no one has asked me if I never graduated or if I'm in (or not in) the education program. Still, I just really felt like I didn't belong in the school. I know there is nothing wrong with taking a few extra courses, but that was just the general feeling I was experiencing. It will go away after a few weeks I'm sure (I say weeks because I only go on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I'm not back there til next Tuesday).

On the church front, Kristina and I are slowly getting things going for the mid week program. We have a name for the group picked out, a motto, a logo, a key verse; as well we have some leaders set up in certain areas. We're still looking for people to help with the dramas, music, van drivers, and the nursery.I was talking to the associate pastor on the phone for about half an hour last night discussing some things with regard to the mid week program, and he's given us a few names of people he highly recommends for some areas. He also gave a couple of names to contact to see if they could help us in the areas of van driving and nursery. (Kristina if you're reading this, I sent you an email - had one bounce back saying your spam filter wouldn't let it through so you'll have to fix that).

We still need to come up with an opening as well...for the first week. We have a bit of an idea but we need to work on it or see if we can get someone to help us come up with another idea or something...it's still a work in progress. We should probably do this soon (maybe after church on Sunday Kristina?) because we have less than a month til the first night of the program.