Christopher CO#1

I observed my first class on Thursday, January 16th. I entered Felicia's listening class eager to see what was to come. She told me that they were going to be in the computer lab that day and that I was not going to get a chance to observe much, but I think I got to observe quite a bit. When I got downstairs I sat at a table with Felicia and watched the students trickle into the room. It was interesting to see that there were so many people from different cultures that got along so well with each other using the instrument of English.  A student from Saudi Arabia came up to me, trying to practice his English and make some friends I suppose, and asked me where I'm from. I told him Costa Rica,but he asked me if I had any Arab blood in me because he thought I looked so. I told him that as a matter of fact I recently discovered that I was 19% Arab thank you to Ancestry.com and he seemed satisfied that I confirmed his suspicion. Throughout the quiz I was able to observe the classroom setting, how the students took the tests, how they joked around with each other. These were all things I had seen before and it made me reminisce on the times when I was a student learning a language, or simply a student in a small school where I knew all of my classmates and my teacher well. I also got to observe Felicia an the way she interacted with the students. She was poised and funny, keeping the students in line but interacting with them and joking from time to time. They seem to like and respect her and she reciprocates those feelings towards her students. Overall I got to observe how a teacher interacts with her class, how they acted while taking a quiz, and how they interacted with each other. This gave me an inside look into the classroom setting from the teacher's perspective and how it is managed the unique situation of evaluation.