10. Frustrated

What am I supposed to do? Where does this frustration start? This is a record of how I messed up my class.

1. Lack of English skills

I should have explained everything more with handouts rather than my words. My lack of English skills brought misunderstanding. That is where all the problems started. They could not understand what I said. They did not check their understanding because they believe (actually it is true at some points) I cannot understand questions and give a clear explanation. Today, I finally became to understand we were not on the same page. Everything started to go into a bad situation from that point.

2. Lack of clear goal

What is the goal of this class? How on earth we can teach and learn without clear goals? We focused on social and emotional learning that nobody defines manifestly. Without understanding what SEL is, no doubt that everything will go bad.

After the mission, I tried to explain what collaboration is. Students explain it as working together to achieve the same goal. But, I thought that that explanation is only one part of the whole meaning the word has. Even though members who are in a team work together, that did not mean that they want to work together. When people are willing to help each other, when people start to care really from the inside of their hearts, that is where real collaboration starts to work. It is really hard. It requires understanding others' situations and the personal purpose of the class and even loving them as a team. This world is so mean. People always think about the goal to achieve. Without the same goal, people don't really care about each other. If there is someone who has a different goal that is against my goal, they blame others and find a weak spot to attack and destroy it. 

This is my opinion, not a fact or knowledge that could be accepted by the whole world. In that situation, I should have had a clear goal and let them share their ideas with my thoughts, which means that the goal is to think critically and expand their existing perspective. 

3. Lack of an appropriate learning pathway

Teachers need clear directions to improve their knowledge or skills. No matter how the concepts are vague and abstract, they should be clearly articulated in a way that a teacher and students understand. I wasn't able to show the way my students get on in a class. I just took the way I am used to. Making handouts could be a good way to express the clear direction I am trying to do.

 

To put it shortly, I need to make handouts having correct English expressions, clear goals that should be achieved in a class, and a detailed understandable learning direction.