What I often do is I do is I do these one minute or two minute speeches where they talk
to their partner on the topic of today's lesson. And what they say is not that important.
I don't know what I'm talking about. The teacher's asked me to talk about the news so I have
to keep... So I do a little demonstration and I say it
could be like this. It could be one minute...go! 'Oh I don't know what to say. The teacher's
told me to talk about shopping today and so I'm not sure what I can say about shopping
except that I went shopping yesterday and I didn't like it. It was too crowded and...erm...
I... shopping is a word...the last three letter are -ing. And well, Hong Kong is a great shopping
centre and there's lots of things you can buy. I remember I bought something two days
ago and it was broken so I took it back and I remember it was..
And then they start talking about shopping from just talking about 'I don't want to talk
about shopping', 'the teacher has told me to talk about shopping', so you just say,
don't worry just keep going and that energy starts building up.
And it takes them from zero to, you know, action, moving and that energy to start the lesson.
There is no proper rule book so they can be
as deviant as they want, the, it's simply the case of speaking in those early stages
so you could have some sort of deviancy which is perfect so they can start going off
you know 'oh this is rubbish, shopping. Why should I talk about shopping? I have no idea
what I can say about shopping except that shopping's rubbish'. Well they're talking about shopping
and they've got that energy going for starting the class.
It's pretty much shown, it's proven that if you get the body moving then the mind kind
of gets in the same energised state. So you can take anything, turn it into something
physical and then you've got some real energy going in the body and that seems to affect
the energy in the whole thinking and everything.
You can do that with everything so I do it with student corrections. I mark their work,
the next lesson I have their work broken into strips of paper and a student from each team
comes and finds the teacher somewhere hiding in the classroom, sitting at the back, collects
a strip and then comes back and corrects it, corrects the work. And then comes back to the
teacher, if it's correct so I give them the second strip. It seems like well, why bother?
Why don't you just give them out the ten corrections and do it yourself. But it's the energy, it's
the... they're moving out of the chairs, going to somewhere and then coming back again.
Well today's subject is all about current issues that are happening in Hong Kong and
around the world, so it's a very large brainstorming activity.
There's always a chance to keep the energy going by maintaining a sort of light-heartedness
in the class. And that's tricky if you do feel a bit down, if you've worked for the
whole day and this the last lesson and you're exhausted. I sometimes do, like a little meditation
thing where I sit down quietly for five or ten minutes and I sit and think about the
students and you kind of just wish them, kind of, you wish they have a nice time in your
class. You just kind of generate a nice feeling towards the students and that, surprisingly,
has an effect. I don't know how, whether it's my attitude or...there's something very subtle
comes about. You've always had those classes where you've
dreaded going in and that dread sometimes unfolds as..something...something does go wrong
because you're in a negative mood you're in a sort of combat zone, you're thinking 'oh
no, I've got to get through this' but if you kind of gradually generate some positive feeling
it's worthwhile, I think so.