At last....

I was allowed, for the first time, to teach a group of students in a way that appealed to me, and, so I hoped, to my students. In my usual manner, I must have spent hours crafting a lesson on animals, complete with a slideshow of pictures of animals, improv, songs, a song from Simon & Garfunkel which I played earlier for Kyoung to test her understanding of the lyrics...and then, when I actually left the room with the group of ten volunteers, I did no more than stop by the libaray for a couple of children's books which I read to them, amid much enthusiasm, particularly of my animal noises and special effect sounds. Yes, they were too noisy, but I explained to them afterwards that this new style of teaching would be a collaboration, as much them as me, and that if this were to succeed, I needed their cooperation. I think it sank in that if they were loud, disruptive, inattentive, it would be back to the book, and the threat of this was sufficient to scare them into good behavior. The entertainment provided by my reading aloud to them rather took care of that on its own, but a little warning proved useful; at any rate, they looked nearly panicked at the thought of this treat being taken from them having recieved a taste of it.