A little light in the darkness

“Don't curse the darkness but light a candle.”
- Brother Andrew

I use this quote because this week has proved this point the hardest.
I planned to use my station work activities for my sixth grade class and see how it went, improving upon my directions and using MIC techniques, but it didn't happen.

On Monday night, I was in a lot of pain. I could barely sleep, but I still wanted to go to school the next day.
When Tuesday came, I was in no shape to go to school. I rushed myself to the hospital and texted and called my cts about my condition.
I only write that to explain what amazing things happened in my class while I was gone!

My co-teacher announce to the students that I would not be in school that day, because I was very sick.
She used the phrases from the book "Liz called me this morning. She said I have a stomachache, I can't go to school today." At first the students laughed because they thought it was one of our role plays about the lesson. (we use role plays to motivate the students and introduce new vocabulary)
Then when she said she was serious the students couldn't believe it. They looked in the hall way and the little room and when they discovered that I was not there, they were sad. ("When is she coming?" "What's wrong?" "Is she okay?")

My co-teacher went on with the lesson, but then when they got to the song in the book, the "Get well song" one of the students suggested that they should practice it and video tape it. And send the video to me while I was at home being sick. Out of seven classes, 2 classes agreed made a video of themselves singing the "Get well Song" with a whole class "GET WELL SOON LIZ TEACHER!" at the end.

My co-teacher sent me the videos from the classes and I watched them from my home. In the video the students were trying to hard, and many of the students who never sang before were singing the song.
I understand why they were doing this, but it still made me happy to see how motivated they were to sing English so that I could hear them.

When I came back today, many students who never speak English were very excited to see me. I got asked all the questions we had been teaching in the book "What's wrong?" "Are you okay?" "What's the matter?". I also got many of the phrases we had been teaching for medical advice. "You have to rest." "Take this medicine" (luckily none of them gave me any medication...) and the best one of the day: "You look bad! Get some rest."

It was very refreshing to be able to speak to the students about my absence and have them listen intently  and understand what I was saying.
I brought in some treats the next day to thank them for their well wishes and I thanked them all for helping me to feel better.

One big thing that really hit me when writing this is the eagerness to use the language they have learned. They all said something, even if it had been said many times before.
It seemed like they were so eager to use the language because they finally had something they felt mattered to the conversation. They genuinely wanted to wish me well, and they genuinely wanted to know what was wrong with me, so they used the English they learned to speak.

The students were my little light when I was feeling sick this week. :)

I know this is more of what we have been reviewing in class with making listening and speaking meaningful, but it was just such a stark contrast to the regular classroom English, while still using it, that I felt I should write it down.

I want to attach the video, but I think my school has a policy against video that is directly of the students' faces (my classes are a more muddy area, that its not the students that are the focus...)