Fulbright FAQ Friday, week 4

Hi guys! I got a very big question emailed to me this week, so I figured it probably deserved it's own post. 

"What are you expected to teach as an ETA?"

This varies from school to school, I can only (and I'm going to) tell you my experiences, but I can't guarantee that's what your school will want from you. However, if it is, then I hope some of this post helps out!

First of all, it's important to note that you are not actually allowed to teach your own classes. That being said, there is some fine print there. Every student is required to take a certain amount of hours of English a week at school, and you are not allowed to replace a teacher for one of these regular English hours. However, it is possible that you will be asked to be in charge of your own extra English classes. For example, I currently have 5 classes a week that I'm 100% in charge of. I'm the only teacher in the room and completely in charge of the "syllabus." One is a group with six 5th graders, the next (and probably most challenging) is twenty-four 6th graders, and finally I have 3 classes with no more than 6 students each in the 10th and 12th grades preparing them for the Cambridge English exam. If it's not my class, then I join other teachers in their regular class and help out in other ways. 

I'll begin with what I do with "my own" classes. This may not be required of every assistant at every school. My first year, I didn't do anything like this, but I've talked to many ETAs this year who have similar assignments. So it really just depends on what your school wants from you. 

For the younger kids we do a lot of games, crafts, and various activities. For example, for the last month with my 5th graders we've been learning Animals, which included worksheets with animal vocabulary, playing animal bingo, singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm," and some crafting. Sometimes the task of creating a years worth of lessons without any book or guidelines seems daunting, but it can also be really fun and let's you get really creative to get the students excited about English. 

With the 6th graders, it is definitely more challenging because there are so many more of them. This cuts down on the amount of games we can play without them getting crazy and out of control, but I have found they really get into Simon Says. As for actual lessons, I've been trying to keep them on a bit more of an "USA" theme so far, since that is really what I have to offer, personally. We've done some lessons I've posted about before, as well some new ones involving me making a bastardized map of New York City in Paint. 

With the Cambridge Exam students, it's a bit different because I'm actually preparing them for the test. So we do some activities and play some vocabulary games pretty often, but we also do a lot of practice testing and discussing that. 

When I join in on other classes, my duties vary. Last year I did a lot of conversation practice, taking students out of class in small groups and just talking to them and encouraging them to speak more English as well. I did that this year too, when helping the 10th graders prepare for their oral exams. 

Sometimes I would be asked to prepare parts of the lesson or the whole lesson for a class (with the teacher sitting in the back, of course!). For example, last year it was pretty common for me to prepare "the fun bit" of a lesson for 15 or 20 minutes either at the beginning or the end for the class. I would most often be asked to prepare lessons when the subject had to do with the US, but I also, did some random other lessons as well. If a teacher asks you to prepare something though, don't worry, they are usually pretty good in working with you to make sure you've got everything you need. You just have to ask! 

Now, I can't do a whole post of what an ETA does at school and not disclose the ETAs darkest secret: You will spend a lot of time sitting in the back of a classroom twiddling your thumbs and being the human dictionary. Unfortunately this is just the reality of the job. And I can't really fault the teachers all the time. Sometimes the students do have to learn boring grammar or finish a unit in the book or learn other things that I'm honestly not qualified to teach. But it's not completely useless for me to be there. When students are doing work, I go around the classroom and double check everything and am also available for questions. 

Your school should talk to you when you arrive to discuss what their expectations of you are as well as what your expectations of the school are. Sometimes it's hard at the beginning to know exactly what you want to do - especially if it's your first year - but you can go back at anytime and talk about new ideas or things that haven't been working or things that you want to do more of. Communication with your teachers will play the biggest roll in what you do in your year as an ETA. It has been my experience - at both schools - that they are very interested in what you want to do and what you think you can contribute to the school and are always open to suggestions. 

phew! Told you that question needed a whole post, and I could probably keep going, but I think that will do for now! 

other Fulbright FAQ posts can be found here

other questions can be left as a comment on this post or emailed to me here