It was my suggestion to assign two teachers to each grade, so that the students would benefit during their two-hour lesson from two different teaching styles, accents, etc., that they wouldn’t have got if they had only one teacher for the whole lesson. So, the time-tabling of two adjacent grades on the same evening meant that the teachers would switch over after the break.
One evening, ten minutes into my teaching Grade 2, one of the Grade 1 students came to my classroom, saying that their teacher still hadn’t turned up.
Those were the pre-mobile phone days, so I couldn’t try to get in touch with the teacher and find out. The only thing to do was to keep the Grade 1 students occupied until their teacher arrived — if he did at all, which was an unknown.
Luckily, the two grades were on the same floor, but at opposite ends.
I set a few sentences for the Grade 2 students to translate, testing grammar and vocabulary.
While they were doing that, I ran down the corridor to the Grade 1 class, and set some Q&A sentences for them to do: What’s your surname, What’s your personal name, Where are you from, Where do you live, Are you married, How old are you?
While the Grade 1 students were doing that, I ran back to the Grade 2 class, went over the translation sentences with them (analysing why / why not use a particular structure or word), set them more sentences, and ran back to the Grade 1 students.
In this fashion, I ran back and forth down the corridor for another 20 minutes until the Grade 1 teacher arrived.
I swore my students to secrecy over this. Mustn’t let the university know I could teach two classes (almost) simultaneously, or they’d try to save money by getting me to do it.
(London, 1994)
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