English as a Second Language

i have to teach again tomorrow and i am NERVOUS. below, complete with all the new code i've learned, is a vague outline

hello class. let's talk about some vocabulary you will need today. what is the opposite of private? (elicit, elicit, patience, patience) ICQs yes! louder! is my kitchen public? is central park public?
next, what do you say to someone who's old but acts young? hmm? someone who should be more serious? act - age? yes! repeat! write on board.

okay. here are some questions. discuss for 3 minutes. less TTT
okay. nang, what did you talk about?
and then point even, rather than speaking, at other students

next take out this [pointing] (page 62). you 3 pretend you are laura. how does she feel. you three jason, how... etc. take 5 minutes. ICQs? what do you talk about? how does barack obama feel? no, how does laura feel etc

okay. everybody stand up. if you are a "laura", find a "friend." in a pair and pretend you are laura and they are the friend. ICQ do you talk to your group? talk for 5 minutes

what was laura's problem? jason's? what are other problems people have? if blank, write on board "boss/mean" "dog/pee/floor" etc. with a partner, take 2 minutes and think of more problems people have.

after, show on OHP my letter, "write a letter about your problem. ask for advice" ICQ will you write a letter like mine? take 10 minutes

trade your paper with the person next to you and write some advice for them on their paper.

that's about it i think

this is the cause of my panic.

all the different paint colors are an abstracted form of the capitalist push to create new things for people to buy. "summer swam" and "tropical seaweed" are advents no different from the 7th edition of a math textbook that hasn't changed, or a camera with just slightly more megapixels. the push to personalize and find the perfect color for you is an insidious insinuation of palette envy and discontent. imagine a world with 20 colors.

the brute force of being talked at at CELTA is exhausting. at the end of the day i can hardly talk to people. this stuff is serious and dense, and the scrivener book is actually impressive. it makes me feel lousy for being a dabbler. you can teach for a lifetime, it is an art to trick people into learning, to hide the passive voice in fun. still, i wouldn't want to be an ESL teacher for a lifetime. it's like helping the deaf or the insane or disabled; they're the broken ones. a crazy person, i imagine, might attack and question common sense with lunatic abandon. they might make you wonder whether zuchinni can hear us. ESL students are kind of like that except within the petty confines of english grammar. they're fuzzy, imaginative and boundlessly wrong. the difference between rug and rouge can take half an hour, or leap and lip. they'll make you realize the insane variety of ways we use the word "by." but i don't want to live in these petty labyrinths, marching with them through the past perfect conintuous and never admitting the hedges are 2 feet tall (or is it "two feet high"? it's this kind of nonsense that teaching english blurs in you; "doctor, i'm losing touch with reality! i can't remember anymore whether [insert another fucking grammar conundrum here] anymore." everything starts to sound wrong in those rooms, we have to not think to be able to speak the unthinkable treacheries of our mother tongue, our heart tongue. this twisted, wickedly irregular language we speak must gnarl our insides.