Jumat @ UKSW 16 Okt

Last class for the day started at 4pm, to finish at 6pm. "Literary Appreciation" is usually taught by Pur, but she's not around and I've got to get through her materials which, coincidentally, focus on indigenous poetry. The poems, though, don't really represent the range of work available, so I found some mainstream ones by Oodgeroo Noonuccal - "Municipal Gum" and "Dreamtime."

A tough afternoon of work. The class is later-year, but the preferred mode of learning here is to listen to everything the teacher says and to notetake it. Extremely passive. Tried various ways to get students to engage in discussion and share their ideas, but it was getting blood from a stone stuff. In the end, resorted to the dreaded line by line analysis for a couple of the poems. For the last part of the lesson, groups had to discuss "Dreamtime" and report their findings back to the class. This worked okay. Next week's class I'll approach differently. Good teachers shouldn't have to do much talking. The two hours of lecture, one of tutorial approach isn't used here. It's a two-hour class, usually with the teacher talking for the first hour and then students working in groups in the second hour. The format makes the tutorial way of teaching difficult, because there are 40 students in the room. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the end of the class.