As soon as I logged into Cambly today, I was requested immediately to tutor a student. When I picked up their call, their webcam was turned off so I was flying blind in there. I was greeted by what sounded like a middle age woman. She was a Brazilian high school teacher who was looking to improve her English so that she could teach English later down the line. I was thinking “oh no” she’s gonna be evaluating me on my teaching skills since she does this for a living. I asked her what she would like to work on and she mentioned she would like to work on her pronunciation and conversational skills so I was like “ok, we’ll have a conversation and I’ll correct your pronunciation” and off we went.
During our session, I tried to gather some hidden intel from her about teaching techniques she might have employed that I could utilize for my future students, but I don’t think she understood me properly so I just let the question die off. We talked about her students for a bit and how she manages class. She told me she teaches 50 students and has 12 classes a week. That’s 600 students! I joked around with her having to be really tough with her students like the terminator or something in order to manage a class with that many students but she said no, she is really nice and calm and the students don’t really give her much trouble. Imagine if she was teaching over here in Canada with 50 students in a class. It would be complete and utter chaos as we all know how serious our students take their studies over here don’t we?
I thought she would have given me beef or something about not being a good teacher but she told me she enjoyed the lesson. Well what do you know, first time getting praise from a teacher for teaching her English.
We then finished off by talking about food in Brazil, especially how fast food is all over the place now and is making Brazilian’s fat… If you thought you could run away from fast food chains from America, you thought wrong!
Bon Appétit
Canadian Born Chinese (CBC) Tutoring Chronicles 