I am in an unusually privileged teaching situation at the moment (teaching English abroad) where I am working with classes of no more than eight students. With such a low student to teacher ratio, it is easy for me to get to know each student and develop an authentic connection. The bulk of my teaching time consists of asking the students questions about their life experiences and personal opinions and listening to their answers. I spend maybe 20% of my lessons presenting new material, eliciting what they already know and asking questions. The other 80% of the lesson the students are speaking, answering my questions, debating opinions, brainstorming ideas or having a conversation. I get to know the students very deeply, very quickly and this not only allows me to tailor the teaching methods and content to my students, but it makes teaching a lot more enjoyable because I really know my students and care about their development and goals.
Now I am asking myself, is it possible to achieve this same level of connection with a class of thirty students and a much tighter learning schedule? Is it possible to do this without one-on-one communication? How difficult (impossible?) would it be to begin the year with individual conversations with each student? In class or after class? In a regular public school, how could I get to know each and every student at a deeper level?
In my teaching practicum I gave out a learning questionnaire which was very interesting but, because I was only looking at paper, I couldn't connect the answers to the actual students sitting before me. My understanding of their individual personalities, backgrounds and needs did not improve. Sometimes I stood up at the front of room and it felt like looking out into a sea of strangers or at an audience at a play. It could have been anyone sitting there for all I knew. (Though to be fair, in the teaching practicum, we were all kind of thrown in at the deep end.)
So if I could somehow manage to schedule a conversation with each student in my class, what would I ask?
- What makes you happy? What do you enjoy doing?
- Tell me about yourself, your hobbies, your family, your friends.
- What do you do after school and on the weekends?
- What do you like to read?
- If you could go anywhere, where would you go and why?
- Tell me about your favorite grade so far.
- What do you like to learn about? Surf the web for?
- How can I make this year successful for you?
- What are your hopes for the future?
I think I could learn a lot about my students from just a few of these questions. They may seem like very personal questions for an increasingly impersonal school system, but I think it could really help their learning when the students know that the teacher knows them, their interests and their goals. We forget a lot of what we learn in school, but we never forget how a teacher made us feel.
What do you think? Good idea or completely unrealistic? Which questions would you want to ask your students?