I was preparing my lessons for tomorrow and thought it must sound incredible to those of you who imagine teaching is a part-time job with a lot of spare time: it's past midnight and I've been working till now! On Sunday! What have I been doing? I've been re-reading some very famous pages for the**th time in my life! I've been re-reading the texts I'm going to read with my students tomorrow and my notes about the authors and the context, I couldn't do without. Then , I've prepared some easy exercises for my language/grammar lessons.
In fact, tomorrow I'll be coping with my younger students (so vivacious!) from 8.15 to 10.15. Being mostly boys, they are more interested in soccer than in learning English so I'm sure tomorrow our English conversation class, which is supposed to be about their summer readings and holidays, will be "disturbed" by the results of today's matches. They always want to talk about football and I'm not very good at that: I have very limited knowledge and very limited vocabulary (penalty, score a goal, goalkeeper, mid-fielder, attacking mid-fielder, defender, striker, captain, manager, team ...too little for a conversation!) . IBut I got to a compromise: they teach me about soccer (but I'm not that good as a pupil) and I'll teach them some English. They usually feel motivated and they collaborate more actively if you show some interest in their world and passtimes. This is the easiest part of my tasks.I 'll have to stimulate conversation in English and to correct some grammar exercises (past continuous / past simple).
Then, from 10.15 to 11.15 I'll be reading FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley with my oldest students (5th year, the last year in our school, 19-year-old students). We are going to read the part of the novel in which the creature is the narrator and the reader sees the story from his point of view: the monster as an outcast is the theme. I'll be linking the creature's sad tale to J.J. Rousseau's idea of a "good natural man" and discussing the theme of the double in this gripping, complex novel.
From 11.15 to 12.15 I've got an hour off to fill in evaluation forms , correct entry tests, prepare photocopies (a coffee?)
From 12.15 to 13.15 I'll be reading Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET with my 4th year students (18-year-old) . We've talked about Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Drama in general, we've watched the final part of the movie Shakespeare in love and discussed about the main features of the Theatre of the age. Now it's time to start reading the famous, tragic love-story. We'll start from the Masque, the crucial meeting between the two young lovers at the Capulets' party. Romeo's soliloquy followed by the two lovers' exchange resulting in a sonnet:
Romeo :"Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night"
(...)
"Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
(he kisses her)
Thus from my lips by thine my sin is purged".
Was it worth to be up till a quarter past midnight? I don't know. I'll discover it tomorrow, well in a few hours, in my students' eyes and reactions. For now, good night. I really hope to have Shakespearean love dreams and not Gothic Shellean nightmares, now!
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