Open Class

When I got out of the for profit school system and into the more relaxed public system I thought that open classes were done with. An open class before meant parents sat in the class and we are told to run a class with the parents participating along side of their kid. It's purely for show where both kids and teacher's wear their nicer clothes and run through the same lesson we have been practicing all week. Basically, it's a rehearsed skit where you show off the kid's skills. This allows parents to make up their mind if their (big) money is being well spent.

Now, an open class means all the other English teacher's in the city (both Korean and Westerners-there are now four of us- they need three more so let me know if you want a job) come to the class and observe. We then sit around and dissect the class saying what's good and bad about it.

Yesterday I had my open class and things went better than I was expecting. It actually went perfectly. My grade six class is a hit and miss type class. Sometimes they are great and other days I want to rip certain kid's heads off and play a match of football with it. But they had promised to be excellent for the class and were. The other teachers wanted to know how I controlled the kids so well and I had to tell them the truth that I had threatened the kids for a week leading up to the class. So like all open classes it wasn't even close to being a natural setting.