Week 2

September 5, 2011

I know I haven’t updated you, but there is honestly not all that much to say. I teach the same 4 lessons to 5 classes over a period of a week. Last week, as the first week, was alright. Paul came in a co-taught a class with me, and I didn’t feel like it went well at all, and I feared that without his authority over them, I might lose them completely. They are going to be my worse class, and they act stupid all the time, but I do still have authority, at least over most of them. Last week we had about 2 lessons which were supposed to be on the phonics song (A, A, Apple, B, B, Bear…) but I lost two classes to a nationwide assembly so they only got one class on the song. Erin says that it’s an over the year song, but I thought we only had the two lessons on it. Every week we learn a new song, and the children are then marked by how well they sing the songs in a song competition at the end of the semester. Therefore, we will have to come back to the songs and practice them as we go along. I understand that the Resident Teachers (those who have them for the full day, including dorm time) drill the songs into them as well. Overall, my lessons went alright. It can be really frustrating though. I can make a plan, try it on my first class and have everything work great. I can walk into my next class and nothing will work. Therefore, it’s not like I can ever perfect a lesson because it has to change with every class. I guess in a way this perfects it and my teaching because teaching really is thinking on your feet and adjusting your plan as needed to match the student’s needs. However, I think for me to build confidence, the last class I teach it to should get a perfected method where I know I will do a good job because it has worked on the last four times I taught it. I don’t know. I can see the merits of it needing to be changed for each class, but I just want to know I am improving, which I can’t do when the new class flusters me. Class seven is stupid and likes to fool around. Class nine has a Canadian girl in the class and every day she tells me that my games are boring or for babies. I think next time I see them I am going to get her to give points to the class when they deserve it. I think I will let her decide when as well. I am pretty sure that she speaks English at home so my classes are just stupid to her. At least she is the same age as the other kids. We have some kids that are in grade 4 in the States and placed in grade 2 here because their Chinese is not up to par. That’s gotta be so hard on them! Class ten has one of my teacher’s children in it, and the child stares out the window all the time. Mom says that she loves English class, but she is never paying attention to me. Normally, class 6, 9 and 10 are my favorite classes. For the first three years of elementary school, the children are in the same class with the same resident teacher. So my class nine has been together for two years. Next year, grade 3, class 9 will be the same as my current class. One they reach a certain age (I am not sure if it’s grade 6 or 8) they will be separated out. Class 1 will be the smart kids and class 10 will be the stupid kids. That’s a whole lot of mumble jumble for you.

Friday night was Erin’s birthday. We all went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant. It was pretty cool; we had a room to ourselves and two cooks cooking all of our food in front of us. There was a lot of fish, but I ended up pretty full too. It was a little frustrating for me because it cost 150 Yuan and it was all you can eat and all you can drink, but 150 Yuan seems like a ridiculous amount to pay for dinner. I also wasn’t feeling full having only eaten meat. However, by the time we left I felt like I might vomit from the sheer amount of meat in my stomach. Thankfully, I didn’t. The plan was to come home after dinner, set off some fireworks, and then a bunch of people were going back out. I was one of the first taxi’s home, so I thought I would have time for a Skype call. I missed the incoming text and ended up missing the fireworks. I heard them, and I hear that they weren’t amazing and some of them didn’t work.

Saturday I spent the day alone in my room. I just couldn’t bring myself to hang out with anyone. I cleaned my room and realized that my bathroom sink isn’t actually connected and is filling my cabinet with water. A repair man is supposed to be coming to my place any time now. I read a book for most of the day and then joined the boys for dinner. I tried to go to the porch where we all hang out but lasted only about five minutes before I couldn’t handle it. Sunday was a lot of the same, but I was thoroughly engrossed in my book. (My repair man came and left in less than 5 minutes….) Erin sent out a text saying that she was making soup and to come upstairs with a bowl around 6 pm. I headed upstairs at about 5 pm. Soup was delicious and everyone joined us for the feast. Apparently this is going to be our Sunday thing. Someone will cook and the rest of us will eat and bring extra munchies. Four of us, none of whom live on the third floor, curled onto the couches that have been moved out of a room to watch a movie on the porch. Niha’s battery died though, so we finished in her room.

Now, we have started week two and I am four classes down. I started with class nine and they seemed stupid today. I was like “oh no! What are the rest going to be like if this class is stupid?” Angela, of course, told me I was boring her. We had four vocabulary words to learn and games to play while we learned them. They didn’t seem to catch onto the drill. I went to class 7 (the worst of the worst) and they seemed to get it but were too busy fooling around to care. The resident teacher put a boy in the hall and he ran wild for my class. I had tried to get him to stand at the front of the room with his hands in the air like I have been told to do, but he wouldn’t stand up. That’s when the teacher dragged him (literally) into the hall. We already had a boy standing at the front of the class because I had taken 3 items away from him and he just kept getting more things to play with out of his desk. I took a deep breath and went to class 6. Class six was amazing. They got it, we played games, we had points going, and we even played the song we will learn tomorrow. The class right before lunch is only a 30 minute class so we ran out of time, but they were going so well! At lunch we had a dress rehearsal for Teacher’s Day which is on Friday. We have to do a performance (shouldn’t they perform for me, and tell me how wonderful I am?) on Thursday night. Our performance will have the humour factor going for it well – we are doing a get ready for school skit where a person sits behind another person and does their makeup/shaves them and brushes their teeth for them. I ended up behind John. I was almost looking forward to being covered in whatever, but I am a doer instead. John is a big man so his arms (my arms) are ridiculously small and start at my elbows so it should be a good time. I can barely reach his face! I am hoping someone will video it for us. After lunch and our dress rehearsal, I went to my final class, class 8. These guys did alright. They had trouble with one of the games I wanted them to do, but I changed it slightly and they got it. They already know the song apparently, so that will either make tomorrow incredibly difficult or incredible easy…. Three cheers for five class Tuesday!

That’s my life in a nutshell. We have to work Saturday so that we can have Tuesday off. Monday is a holiday and we want our kids to spend the holiday day with their families, so we are making the long weekend Sunday – Tuesday. However this means that our half day Fridays won’t be a half day, but Saturday should be. Holidays are so complicated around here! George is talking about going to Nanjing for the weekend, I might join him. I am trying to save some money, but it sounds better than sitting here for three days!

Been a while since I heard from most of you… please don’t forget about me! Love ya!