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03/06/2004 Entry: "Teaching English"

Here's something revealed that I've not even mentioned to Susan yet. (I keep forgetting to tell her.) For years now, I've been teaching adult ed. I've taught classes in buying and selling on ebay, digital cameras and scanning, Internet for beginners, Internet for seniors, etc. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to the adult ed director (and my former biology teacher in high school) that I at one time thought I'd like to teach high school English.

Before my class on Thursday, he asked how I felt about teaching the GED English class. It would be three hours a week for 15 weeks. And you know what? I'm a little hesitant. It's not the teaching. I love doing that, and I've been doing in a while. (I was teaching drum students well before adult ed.) But in classes I've taught previously, I've developed my own curriculum. What was important was up to me, and determining what was going to be covered was my call. With GED English, though, there are years and years of developed standards of what needs to be covered. And, with this "new style" education (for lack of a better term on my part), what's considered "acceptable" is really quite loose. Now, you're (the teacher) supposed to determine "proficiency." Is the student proficient at such and such. I took a brief look at their outline, and it was really loose. "Is the student proficient at developing characters and building acceptable plot lines in fiction stories?" For me, having never taught English before, I would prefer something a little more concrete. But I'm not ruling anything out. Certainly, it's a good way to get my feet wet, and get a foot in the door, so to speak.