A student with a teacher's hat on - part 1

Every time I see other people teach, I always wonder about my own teaching style. And I did just that yesterday for the entire period of my Spanish class. Yes, I have decided that it's time to brush up on my rusty-yet-still-there Spanish by taking up an Intermediate class. But since the class was short of students yesterday, I was asked to join the Beginner II class for the day. I was more than happy to do so, since I had little to zero confidence in my ability to say more than "Hola, me llamo Tia." :p

So there I was sitting in a class as a student, listening to the teacher, diligently taking notes, participating in the activities, and doing all the required assignments. But for some reasons, I couldn't stop observing the way the teachers taught (I had a female teacher for the first hour and a male for the second hour). I watched closely how they interacted with us, the students, how they managed the class, how they directed questions and instructions, basically my other half of my brain wanted me to put on my teacher's hat and observe the teachers.

I like to observe other people teach because I know that I could learn from their best (and poor) practices. So yesterday, I took some mental notes of my two teachers and due to my limited brain capacity, I figure that I should write them here.
(Let's just say that the female teacher is Ana, and the male is Manu).

1. First impression matters

I noticed that the moment Ana walked into the classroom and said her first greeting, she would be a teacher that can engaged the students. She projected her voice well (it's a small class of 8 people) and put on a big smile as she spoke. She was very inviting from the first minute of the class and I could see how everyone in the class paid close attention to her immediately.
Unfortunately, Manu spent the first couple of minutes of the class pacing around the class in silence. Maybe he was trying to get his thoughts together? Or perhaps he was waiting for the class to get ready (but I thought everyone was ready for him)? Or it's possible that he's nervous... But either way, he didn't show a lot of enthusiasm and he looked kind of confused through out the class period. The level of energy in the class learning-is-fun to when-this-class-gonna-end.

2. Come prepared to class!
Teachers always say this to their students but often teachers don't say this enough to themselves. Ana and Manu had to replace the actual teacher of Beginner II class but they were very different in terms of their preparedness for class. Ana had the flow of the class going--a quick yet engaging introduction of students and teacher, a review session to inquire students' prior knowledge (there were new and returning students), the main teaching point of the day (ser vs. estar), a class activity followed by small group activity, and closing session to go over questions from students.
On the other hand, Manu was all over the place... After the solemn introduction, he opened the class by asking everyone to go over what we learned with Ana. And then he jumped from one grammar point to the next. It looked to me as if he mentioned all these stuff to the students as they popped in his head. The students lost interest in his class and their focus turned to the clock ticking... tick-tock-tick-tock!

There were a couple of other things I noticed, but I'll save them for later. During my time as a student of this Spanish class, I'm sure that I'll have much more to learn from the teachers. A couple of things that I took away from yesterday's class are:
* engaged your student from the second you walk in to the class (leave your baggage at the door!)
* be enthusiastic because it shows to the students that you care (the students are there to learn)
* teach 3 things, but plan 10 things (over-planning never hurts and know them well)

Until next time...