October 18, 2003 – The blind leading the blind

nova-schedule

(complete rewrite from the original post)

Work was insane today. Overall there were 4 schedule changes. Since I am still pretty new, it takes me a long time to plan my lessons. A schedule change may involve a new student added into a lesson. That new student might have recently done the lesson you were planning to teach, which will involve finding a new lesson that works for everyone. It is also possible to have your entire lesson switched with another teacher to avoid the same student having two lessons in a row with the same teacher. Again, this will involve coming up with something new on short notice.

Due to continuous changes, I ended up with a business class student for a short time. The business class involved a set curriculum which I knew nothing about. Fortunately one of the senior teachers saw the problem and got this fixed before I failed spectacularly. My other big challenge was being scheduled with a low level student who was nearly completely blind. Nova was supposed to be heavily focused on speaking and listening, but there was still a big textbook component to the lessons. Some of the more experienced teachers had been given special instruction on how to work with blind students, but I am still a novice teacher about 3 weeks into the job. I ended up getting switched to the Voice room 5 minutes before the class started.

Kawasaki Nova is too busy!

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