The perfect lesson…

I’m a teacher trainee student and I have been practicing for almost three weeks now at a large upper secondary school in Umeå. I can’t really say that I have worked my self out but it feels good to come in contact with the “real” school. Anyway, I had a lesson today where the main task was to work with an oral exercise. The students were to work out which room some hotel guests lived in and also figure out what kind of job and hobby they had. I was a little nervous before the lesson as I know the exercise would be quite difficult. The reason for this is that I had tried to complete it at home the very same morning. I worked with it for more than half an hour and realized with despair that I could not work it out. I tried to calm my nerves (plus taking a deep breath) with the fact that the students can work in pairs and I usually find it hard to complete things like this. So the lesson starts and the students are complaining about how hard it is. “well I know it is hard but you have to try a little harder and I’m sure you’ll work it out”. They continue to struggle with this challenge until my mentor (who hasn’t been able to complete it either) asks me that something might be missing…and yes 30 percent of the clues were missing so no wonder that they couldn’t work it out… A applaud from the class and several curses later I’m back with the correct clue paper.