When I started teaching, as a teachin assistant in Montreal (which at my University meant I was the professor for a freshman class), I didn’t understand that I wasn’t quite supposed to be the same Gord in the classroom as, say, at home. I thought, look, my job is to show people how to do a job. I was teaching writing, something I was good at, and I was teaching students who were basically my own age, or only a few years younger at any rate. I felt that there was no way I could actually pull rank on them, …

Here’s article about how more attractive professors score higher on student evaluations. Now I am curious to see what my student evaluations will look like. In Montreal, I was a lot heavier and I scored pretty well, but I thought it was all the time and work I put into my teaching. Maybe it was just my beautiful eyes? Hahaha.

Here are some notes I’ve jotted into my brain about teaching English as a required subject to undergrad students. Coming Down Hard Can Help. The other day in the classroom I was trying to do attendance. There were a few students near the front who were very polite, went quiet and listened. Well, I halted the roll call. The people in the back kept talking. Finally, I yelled, “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” which is the Korean equivalent of a somewhat harsh, “Hey you!” Then I wrote the words polite and impolite on the board and taught them what they were being, and what …

Here’s a double hit; a collection of crazy and funny jobs in a list, and a list of questions using “do you” to be used in question formation. This should be preceded by fifteen minutes or so of listening and practice. Then a short five to ten minute exercise where students try out the do you questions on one another, and try to form a few new questions (and follow-up questions). Then, spring the weird jobs onto them and see how they do. This works well at several levelsl; for intro-level the students can play guessing games and work on …

Here’s a slightly modified jobs list more suitable for roleplay situations. In this case it’s for telephone stuff, but many situations would be applicable.