"Yeah ... I could teach that in my sleep."  Sooner or later, you will hear yourself at least think this.  If you are like me and prone to smugness, you will hear yourself say it.  And when you do, your next day of teaching will be anything from substandard to pure, unadulterated disaster.   The universe will deal you swift and brutal justice.  And what you need to do next is remind yourself that teaching, if you are doing it right, is ALWAYS hard because learning, if you are doing it right, is ALWAYS hard.  If it's not hard, then you are wasting time. There is one key reason why the best teachers in the world are kindergarten teachers; followed a close second by public middle school teachers.  Both populations will, for very good reasons, punish you for wasting their time.  Kindergarteners cannot AFFORD to let you teach them a lesson that overshoots their interests and fails to find ways to connect their intrinsic motivations with the challenges of school.  There is a similar desperation in the circumstances of a middle schooler -- who gets this short window of time in which to safely discover what adulthood means and what it means to prepare oneself for adulthood. I recently worked in Nashville and taught a population of seventh graders that were desperately in danger of missing that window of discovery.  Boy, you better BELIEVE they were brutal.  Everything that we foreign English teachers deal with in Japan is a cakewalk compared to what a public middle school teacher typically deals with in America. That's why it drives me batty when foreign teachers decide its alright to coast.  Sure, a room full of lawyers and accountants isn't going to humiliate you the way only teenagers can, but still there is still the danger of wasting time -- time that they could have spent replying to emails, calling home to their spouses, digesting their lunches.  (That's not fair, unchallenging English lessons are probably very good for the digestion.) But imagine ... "I could fly this plane in my sleep." ... "I could perform this open heart surgery in my sleep." ... "I could build this bridge in my sleep." Don't.  Don't be irrelevant.  Worse, don't blithely assume you are relevant. Wake up everyday ready to seek joy in the challenge of innovating with the learners that have invested their time in working with you. Speaking of things that I thought I could do in my sleep....  Third-Year, Senior High School, DEBATE SEMINAR, Lesson #5 [Very nervous about today because I really do need to take a run at doing some kind of real discussion activity.  That is what they signed up for, and we need to at least try it as a class and fall flat on our faces so that we can figure out what the barriers are and move forward from there.] #GENERALNOTES

• For the last two classes, we invested a significant amount of time and energy working on #ARMP (authentic rhythm melody and pronunciation).  We need to pivot back to Listening/Speaking confidence.
• #HOMEWORK was for them to practice delivering their 4-Sentence Assertion, where they explain what job they want on the deserted island (see the case study below), why they would be qualified for that job, and what they would do if they had that job.

#MATERIALSANDPREPARATION

• Three pieces of candy.  [I KNOW ... I know ... but I don't have any grading authority.  I need to get at least three kids to model for the rest of the class.]
• Orestes Lorezo -- 9 Copies https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5CUYGaByd1Pdjd4OEdqM3A4U2c/view?usp=sharing
• Lord of the Flies Case Study https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5CUYGaByd1PaDV1d2JEUjVRdWc/view?usp=sharing

#Action Refresh Listening-Speaking Confidence #Completewhen I am able to elicit understanding of the story, where the students communicate that understanding in full sentences and can handle very easy follow-up questions.

• Tell the students the story of Orestes Lorenzo --https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5CUYGaByd1Pdjd4OEdqM3A4U2c/view?usp=sharing
• Elicit understanding from the students.
• Try to get everybody to say something about the story.

[The listening/speaking confidence of these boys is PAINFULLY low, so any "authentic" discussion activities need to be bolstered by a warm up that isolates listening/speaking confidence.  The tough decision, at this point, is do I risk having the listening-speaking confidence portion of the lesson take up so much time that there is no real time to run the discussion activity?  And what I have decided is that that is framing the problem in the wrong way.  Listening-speaking confidence is a prerequisite, so there's no way to skimp on that.  The challenge is to design the second portion of the lesson in such a way that even if we have only about 10 minutes at the end, we can accomplish something meaningful.] #Action Reciprocate Effort on Homework #Completewhen I am able to get at least two kids to stand up and deliver their assertion.

• Announce that the one that goes first gets a piece of chocolate.  (Et cetera et cetera until I have gotten at least two boys to present.  (Don't five away the third chocolate.)
• Without damaging speaking confidence too much, push for #ARMP when boys are presenting.
• Give LOTS and LOTS of positive feedback.
• And where a boy volunteers a clever use of English, draw attention to it and do a little bit of Target-Structure Drilling off of it so that the boys that are not presenting are not COMPLETELY passive.

#Action Preliminary Discussion [WITH WHAT TIME IS LEFT] #Completewhen there has been some independent discussion as a class about.

• "We need a discussion leader ... a facilitator."  Announce that whoever volunteers to be the facilitator will get the last chocolate.
• THE TASK ... nobody has volunteered to be the Prime Minister.  You must work as a group and decide who will be the Prime Minister.  ENGLISH ONLY!

And now I have to go teach this lesson....