NALC (2 hours)

I arrived at NALC a little earlier before my session at 10 o' clock because I wanted to look over the lesson plan for that day to prepare. At 10 o'clock sharp, a Cambodia man (S.K) and I started our lesson. We first shared about our weekends and then jumped into the "pizza" lesson book. He first described the picture he saw, which was a family in a shoe store trying on different kinds of shoes. We then went on to vocabulary words that he would soon read in the next page of a short story. I first pronounced the vocabulary word and then he repeated me. He then told me that he could read the words first and then if he pronounces the word wrong, I can correct him. I was really impressed by his memory because he first read the short story, and then 10 minutes later, there were comprehension questions to go over, and he knew many of these answers without looking back to the story to find them. I broke up the comprehension questions with asking him related questions to the short story. This way, the lesson didn't feel too stale or not personable. The lesson ended by S.K telling the NALC staff that I was a great teacher! I felt a great sense of joy and accomplishment when I heard him say that because I was unsure of my tutoring skills, and this gave me some confidence.

My second lesson started at 11 o' clock, but I didn't have much time to read about my text student or prepare myself for the next lesson. The lady I tutored was from India and she had 3 kids she loved to talk about. Right when she sat down, she showed me her homework that she was proud of and I graded it. Everything was right that she copied down except she spelled one word wrong. She didn't get discourage but right away erased her mistake and corrected it. We went through her lesson which consisted of writing letters and recognizing ending sounds of words, vowels and consonants. I told her many times "good job" because she was doing an amazing job. A couple times, I told her she should be tutoring me and that made her laugh. At the end of the lesson, she thanked me a couple times for my time. I felt good about both lessons, and went a way knowing that I contributed just a little bit to their journey of learning English.