My phone number is
(001) 15105276381 (I am pretty sure you need that first 1, but I could be confused!)
Day 2, my first day with other classes was a disaster. I told John that I was coming home because I obviously could not teach properly. I thought I had my class again, and with my class, I would have felt better about bumbling my way through, but I had someone else’s class! Everything I had for Canada was on movies and PowerPoint’s on my computer. I had gone at 930 on Tuesday night to the Human Resources department to print some colouring sheets for my Wednesday class. This is all I had with me. At this point, there was no printer available to teachers – at least not easily accessible. I also didn’t think to check the operating system of the computers in the classroom. Needless to say, my 2010 program files didn’t open on the 2003 system. So NOTHING worked. I decided I had to wing teaching Canada. All that really looked planned was that I had colouring sheets for them! And, the class I had didn’t want to speak English to me. They would answer the translator’s questions in Chinese and she would repeat them back to me. It didn’t matter how easy my question was. Of course, if I hadn’t been so flustered already, I might have had more control over them. After Canada time was over (finally!) (And, I also don’t really have anything for my holiday either, because they are so much the same! No one wants dates and history!), and we went to play dodge ball. It was lightly raining, so everyone was in the gym. It’s a big gym, but 100 plus people is far too many! It was so hot in there! I managed to get an hour out of the kids playing dodge ball, but it is a 90 minute session. We went back to the classroom and played my new rendition of musical chairs, so at least they were still be active. I was so happy when they said they were going for dinner early. It’s funny, it’s my classroom, but I am not in charge of the schedule. If the national teacher says this is how it is, this is how it will be. She is also in charge of discipline in the classroom. Does that mean I cannot discipline? I have no idea, but I am not good at it anyways! After dinner we watched “Despicable Me” and I came back and tried to get lessons ready for today.
Today went much smoother, for the most part. I got up early because it is my laundry day. I thought that someone did our laundry for us, but apparently that is only if you are not staying on campus (totally not what our information said). So, I got up early, and stuck a load on. The machines are tiny, but really, seven tops and a couple pairs of shorts is all I have. I went for breakfast and Lisa told me that she was on her way to open the printer room (we have taken over Paul’s office – he will be my boss for the school year, but is not a part of the camp). Half an hour later, it was time to go to our morning meeting, and I hadn’t made the printer work yet, and Paul’s computer is all in English! Awesome start. I get to class and try to play a PowerPoint. It works, but the projector doesn’t. It’s my kids, we I know they are adaptable. I cut up stickers and we found out the names. Paul came in and I asked if he could do some printing for me. He took my USB and went back to his office to print off a copy of the animals that I wanted to teach. When we came back we did a relay with the students finding amongst the stickers the animal that I called out. The boys won, but it was really close. Lunch was disgusting today. I pretty much only ate the rice. It was a full chicken I think in my meat section of my tray, but what I assumed to be feet (looked like toe-nails to me) were much fatter than I remember the chicken feet in our freeze all those years ago! The afternoon I got to teach Canada again, but to a different class. Now my projector was working, and everything was great, except we went through it too quickly! I brought my laptop just in case – I wasn’t going to wing 90 minutes again! We played a similar relay to what my class did, but they had to name the animal picture I held up first to get a point. Paul brought in some Canadian pins so I gave those to the first place team and stickers to the losers. Giving out 20-25 things a day I will not make it! Lol. We will see what I do with the older kids. Maybe I really only will give things to the winners. I haven’t given out anything but stickers really. Again, I managed an hour of dodge ball before they got bored, but I still had 45 minutes to kill. I put the kids on a break to clean up and get a drink and I ran to Paul’s office and found a Canada word search online which I printed. My teaching assistant photocopied it for me (we only are allowed to print, not make copies on our machine). The kids coloured and worked on the crosswords until the end of the period. I also brought my Canada puzzle in and as they finished they worked on that. Their English is not good enough for me to read the stories I wanted to read to them. Maybe I have one that is simpler. We are allowed to go to the library and read if we need something to do with our homeroom. We have more homeroom time than anticipated as there are too many students for the art/dance/science and clay days. I learned today that two of the three field trips on the schedule are just for teachers! That will be nice! We have one on Saturday to Yangzhou (Young D Joe) and one on Tuesday to Nanjing. The final field trip will be a school field trip to somewhere close for a picnic.
We had a BINGO night tonight. It was like a rock concert in there with all the kids yelling! Camp has about 435 children at it, and we were all in this big lecture hall together. I got a BINGO, I gave my prize (a lollipop) to who Sophie told me was the best behaved child throughout the day. Once I got back to the room, I looked more closely at my tentative lesson plans and fixed them up and sent them to Lisa. I feel calmer now than I did last night.
Tomorrow, our day is kind of backwards. Because it has been raining so much, we moved the evening activity to be first thing, and our homeroom class will be in the evening. We are having a scavenger hunt tomorrow – it covers the entire campus and there are ten clues. Lisa doesn’t really expect anyone to finish in the 2 hours we have for it. (Why plan it so big then?) Hopefully it goes well. My class was confused during the instructions, so hopefully Sophie has re-explained it when I get there with the first clue in the morning!
And now, this calm Jenna should head to bed! OH! I got a Chinese name today – it is Ginaa (that last “A” is a high note), and I practiced writing it too. It’s hard! I am told it means very beautiful and very lucky.
Love you! How are things with you! EMAIL ME!
