I was sitting around reading a book before class. I had prepared all my tests for the day, so I really had nothing to do. My director approached me and asked me a few questions about reworking a syllabus mid-term to add a second teacher to help me. It turns out that one of my awesome Korean coworkers (the old head teacher) is going to return, as a free lance part timer for a few weeks. Also, my troublesome coworker will be leaving the school permanently in a few weeks.
If I hadn’t already been clued in by reading some of the journal entries my students wrote, I might have betrayed my feelings at that moment. I just kept my cool as she went on. Seems that since I was away in Europe, this one book didn’t go smoothly. She wanted me to split it up so that when the new teacher arrives, she can help me cut down the workload per class. We’d split up the book and I could spend more time working on the things the students needed to focus on. I was more than happy to pass off some of the material if they needed me to do such a thing.
The students had complained the book was too hard because it was a radically new sort of focus. I picked it out specifically for their level, so if anyone was taking the fall it would be me. It’s hard to blame a substitute teacher that doesn’t know the torture that is IBT-TOEFL, my area of expertise at the moment. They didn’t choose the book, and without wading through some of the 800 page books we used in previous classes, there isn’t enough material or background to make the point of teaching the class clear to a substitute. I’ve used the other hellishly long books, and even completed some of them, so I know WHY I’m going with the simple, minimal style book this time around. I picked the book best for my class, not my substitutes.
While the students had tried to pull a revolution while I was away and tried to pressure the director for a new book, no one had mentioned the book’s difficulty in a few weeks since I started back at the school after my vacation. I had changed the way I had approached the book when I returned to school, and I guess it worked. My director said that since I had gotten back the students were better able to cope with the work load of the book. Turns out having a teacher in the class that knows what he is doing is worth it.
