TEFL Assignment B Passed
Today I obtained confirmation that I have passed Assignment B – creation of a 60 minute lesson.
There were segments that need refinement, and I personally believe they are the types of refinement that come with experience, so I will not take it as a person failing. It had to deal with a class of 14-16 year old students at an A2 language level. I chose to utilize the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for teaching the ‘first conditional’ or protasis and apodosis.
I distinctly remember being 17 and taking a Spanish class in my high school. I had some background in Spanish from a different school, but I was no where further than an A2 for this class. I loved when we were able to use the massive picture books that our teacher had in class. I remember Stellaluna most distinctly of all in this case. It felt like a treat when we got to use those, rather than struggling through reading a chapter book aloud. That thing was painful.
The reason I bring this backstory into play is that I based my lesson on the joy I remember feeling as a language student in a classroom setting around picture books that we otherwise were ‘too old’ to enjoy anymore. All age groups can enjoy picture books. We just put limit on for ‘social propriety’. Anyways, the feedback I obtained from my grader stated that teenagers would most likely not enjoy using a picture book and that the lesson would be more suited for a significantly younger class.
Maybe the grader is right. Maybe teenagers would be too uppity to enjoy a picture book. Maybe I was just the weird one out who has always loved looking at picture books because I admire artists and what they do. Who knows. I was extrapolating out of lived experience.
So, I was feeling kind of neutral about the grade – it wasn’t the best, and it wasn’t the worst – it was enough to pass based off her assessment. Because I haven’t had a lot of practice in planning lessons, let alone executing them with live students, I have to defer to her understanding, and that’s okay. It was the fact that about five minutes later, I received an email from the Universiteit van Amsterdam with the grade for my Matching class for the Bachelor Archeologie. I passed the second assignment, but not at a grade I wanted for the number of hours I put into it. That was demoralizing for having read and synthasized over eighty pages of materials. The reason for the demoralization is that I failed to focus only on the tablets and instead read literally everything in the website…so missed the part of logicing my way through a few tablets and making estimations – what would happen in the field when you find an artifact and don’t have a massive research paper already attached to it. I got it in my head that if I’m being provided with material, I must use all the material.
At least the feedback at the end praised me for being willing to read all the materials…
Anyways, so neither of them were perfect grades. Not even close to my level of perfectionism that rules my life.
Driving up to the post office to ship off the last bit of our tax filings for the year, I told my SO that I want to teach English in Portugal, rather than get my archaeology degree in the Netherlands. I’ve had a month to sit on both of these directions, and honestly, opening up a tutoring shop is turning into my dream job at this stage in my life. I don’t want to deal in dead bodies. I love history. I love learning about it. I love memorizing antiques and their uses. But I don’t want to take forensics classes. I don’t want to run into skeletons at digs. I could work in the preservation rooms, that is entirely doable, but they aren’t the digs I want to be in.
UvA’s degree in Archaeology is focused on European archaeology. This is not surprising by the least. But it’s not my interest. I have my first bachelor’s degree focusing on Asian Art History and Asian History. I want to study Japanese and Chinese art – not the European middle ages. I purposefully avoided all art and history classes relevant to Europe other than one that was focusing on historical trade between East and West. I love the influence of Ukiyo-e on the Impressionists – but that time frame doesn’t readily slot into archaeology. So, I’m kind of feeling stuck. SO wants me to chase my dream, he’s giving me options, but the reality is that this degree is the store-brand-version of the degree I want. I have tried on numerous occasions to explain why this isn’t the degree I want, but he’s very set in ‘it has the word archaeology attached to it, so therefore it must be the thing you have said you wanted to do for the last 15 years I’ve known you.’ Sadly, the visa program in Japan is terrible for our economic stability. He can’t work while I’m a student – you tell me how we’re supposed to survive.
And so, I’m at a point – and thankful for that Matching class – where I’m looking at this thing critically. I love archaeology, but the field of focus for this college is not where I want to go with it. I don’t like kids all that much in groups, but I do enjoy tutoring folk in a one on one bases.
What I want now is to open a tutoring office in Portugal. I want cozy nooks, bookshelves filled with a variety of language levels, Montessori stations, and a feeling of relaxation for learning. I’m in my mid-thirties. I’ve entered into my NPC era where all that’s in my head when walking down the street is the coffee I’m looking forward to getting at the cafe. I don’t have lofty goals of turning into Indiana Jones anymore. My joints crack too much and I haven’t felt well rested since October when I had a biopsy done on my thyroid.
I was looking forward to the Archaeology degree. Please don’t get me wrong. But the longer I have to consider it and all the factors that go into obtaining it, with it not being the legit degree I actually want (Asian Archaeology), I just can’t come to grips with spending three years on the bachelors, two years on the masters, another 2-4 years on the Ph.D. in a focus that I’m just not interested in. That’s the next decade of my life in a field adjacent to what I want to work in.
Whereas, at least with TEFL, my goal there is aligned with the Editing career I’ve already been building for myself. I need to gain some more clients soon, but getting a lot of life figured out on this side of the pond has ended up taking priority. I am willing to show up to schools and provide my services there until I have ‘worked in the trenches’ long enough to be a respectable tutor who can provide valuable education in one-on-one settings if that’s what it takes. And, if the tutoring office doesn’t pan out, I can still travel and see the world and work with schools in other places too. I can see doing this for the next thirty years of my life and being content in it. Show up, watch people learn things and feel pride in that, go home, eat, plan a day trip for the weekend, watch SO play a video game. That’s where I’m at in life. Is that…is that okay?
