Open Classroom

At the end of last week, we had what is called an open classroom at school. That basically means that parents are invited into the classrooms to observe and see what their children are learning. They also fill out little surveys of some sort to leave any comments they may have about the lesson and the teachers.

I wasn't sure what to expect, as many of my peers have had very different experiences. One person had one parent show up; one person had their co-teacher rehearse the lesson with the class the day before so that they lesson would go flawlessly the next day; one teacher even pulled aside students whose parents were going to come so that they could train them to say the correct answer and make both of them look really good in front of the adults.

None of that shady drama was unfolding at my school, though. My co-teacher was taking things pretty seriously--so seriously that she prepared the lesson plan almost a month in advance! This, in turn, made me very nervous. What if they didn't like me? What if I made a mistake? What if the computer didn't work? (We've been having a lot of technical problems with our computers as of late.) What if I corrected their kid and they got offended because their prince is never wrong? Or worse, what if I had to reprimand their kid in front of them? Either they'd hate me, or they'd give their child licks as soon as they got home. Nobody wins in that situation.

To make things worse, my co-teacher made me a little self-conscious about my teaching the day before, when she kindly offered up some pointers to keep in mind on the big day. 1) Don't point with your finger. That's reserved for animals. Instead, point with an open palm facing up. Thankfully, I quickly acclimated myself to this rule upon my arrival in Korea, so that wasn't a problem. 2) Make sure you speak loudly and clearly. Done and done. 3) Never say no to a student or tell them they're wrong. Instead, say something like "good try" or "good guess." As an Elementary teacher, I sort of do that automatically.

So even though she was just offering these tips up as general reminders because she wanted to ensure that everything went just perfectly, by bringing these issues up, it made me hyper aware of every little one of my actions while I'm teaching.

Then there was the fact that we didn't know how many parents to expect. She said she'd invited all of the parents, but assured me that not all of them would show up, as we were just lowly English teachers--they're more concerned about Math, Science, etc. Regardless, that meant we could have anywhere from 1 to 30 parents hovering at the back of the classroom with their judgmental eyes, scrutinizing just how badly I was ruining their childrens' futures.

In the end, as with most things in my life, it turned out I had been worrying over nothing. We had a total of 8 parents show up, all lined up in a row of seats at the back of the class with pencil and paper in hand. Thankfully, Moon and I were ready for them. She was dressed to kill, and I looked rather presidential, if I don't say so myself. Plus, Moon had prepared various little decorations just for the lesson to class up the joint.

By the time of the open classroom, we'd already taught the same lesson to five other Grade 3 classes, so we knew the lesson forwards and backwards. However, Moon came up with some extra back and forth dialogue for the two of us to make the lesson flow that much more seamlessly. It was above and beyond the best class we'd taught together to date.

It also helped that the students themselves behaved like angels because they didn't want to incur the wrath of mom and dad once they got home.

All in all, we left parents and the Vice-Principal mesmerized with our stupendously orchestrated dance. They even snapped some photos of the handsome foreign teacher in action.