Thursdays have suddenly become an event-filled day after several weeks of having nothing to do before class starts from 7 – 9pm. For the next 6 or perhaps 7 weeks, I will be having micro-teaching sessions in the morning from 9am – 12noon, followed by actual practice teaching at Ultimo TAFE (TAFE is like a vocational institute while Ultimo is just the suburb it’s in) from 1 – 5pm. Following which I have my Phonology & Pronunciation class from 7 – 9pm.
Fortunately Ultimo TAFE is just a 3min walk away from my faculty’s campus so it’s really convenient. Today, I just observed the class and I will start teaching next week. It’s going to be a rather daunting task to prepare and teach a lesson for so many hours! Truth be told, I’m feeling rather nervous!
But the group of people are nice. All of them are migrants / refugees. Some have been in Australia for quite a number of years while others only arrived recently. There were 4 students from Vietnam, 3 from China, 1 from Hong Kong, 1 from Turkey and 1 from Tibet.
Today there was a lot of talking done in class as my cooperating teacher got the students to introduce themselves to me and I managed to get a small insight into their lives. One lady from Vietnam said she came to Australia 11 years ago as a refugee. Before arriving in Australia, she had stayed in a detention centre on an Indonesia island for 11 months. After which, she was sent to Singapore for a week before she came to Australia. I mean, all these are issues one hardly comes across in Singapore or when teaching overseas students like what I had done last semester.
Another interesting topic was how the students found it strange that many Australians use terms of endearment like “sweetheart” and “love” to strangers. The students found it strange that bus drivers, ticket issuing officers, shopkeepers etc use these terms of endearment on them. It really brings to mind all the cultural differences and the issues people have to deal with when they settle in a new country.
Anyway, now I have a lot of work cut out for me. What with preparing lessons for the children I’m teaching, the microteaching and the practicum teaching. That’s a whole lot of lesson plans waiting to be done by yours truly! In addition there are still the assignments and essays to grapple with. So I reckon it’s going to be full steam ahead from now till the end of the semester!