Every week I teach sixteen different classes. Every week I think that I have figured out which classes are good, which classes are bad, which classes are slow, and which classes are shy. Every week I realize that I was completely wrong.
In one particular class, I had an incredibly pleasant surprise a few weeks ago. In previous weeks I found myself very frustrated with this class. It is a special class for students who focus on sports. As a result, the students in this class tended to be very rambunctious, and they did not appear to care much about learning English. This bothered me partly because I really like the students in the class as much or more than any of the students in my other classes, but teaching them was painful and fruitless. For this week, I had prepared a lesson in which I taught my students to sing Hey Jude. I picked Hey Jude because it was slow enough for my students to understand, but enough of a rock song not to bore them. Most importantly, Hey Jude can be found at many of the KTV places in Yumen. Most of my classes were very good that week, only one was bad, but the sports class was by far the best class I had ever taught. They listened intently, they sang loudly, they pronounced the words well, and they answered questions when necessary. If, like me, you are a fan of this song, you will know that at one point he sings "better better better better better better BOW" in very cool way. If you do not know the song very well, I suggest you listen to it right now. Then, you can fully appreciate the thought of 40 students, who previously seemed uninterested in English, belting this song in excellently pronounced English.
There have been many times in which I have left classes, reflecting on how much I enjoyed teaching them. However, this was the first class that I left completely astonished at how much I had enjoyed it, and at how well the students had done.
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