School's Out

The last day of class after a month-long intensive course, and teacher and students alike are in a lightheaded, school’s out sort of mood. This has been one of the best teaching experiences I’ve had, and it’s mostly down to the students: they’re talkative, get on well with each other, ask loads of questions and have made a huge effort with all their assignments despite all having busy jobs. The class started every day at 8am but luckily most of them are, like me, morning people. We got into a routine of working for about an hour and then taking a coffee break together on out the terrace, which officially was meant to last 15 minutes but would often stretch beyond that.

I’ve been teaching the group colloquial phrases and trying to get everyone to use them in context. During the coffee break today the recent film Sharknado came up, and was roundly dismissed as complete rubbish. One student then flapped his hands in a it’s-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue way and said “Wait…wait! Sharknado, it’s so bad it’s good!” using one of the phrases we’d learned. I wanted to high five him. Back in the classroom and with 10 minutes to spare before the end of the lesson, I was persuaded to let them watch the trailer on YouTube. Granted, we were already in a silly mood, but it had us almost crying with laughter.