Wednesday, September 9, 2009

A teaching update

Well a lot has happened in the last week. It has been hard to update because we didn't have internet in our apartment. We finally got internet and now it will be a lot easier to update!

We survived our first week of teaching - and are now half way finished with our second week. I know I shouldn't, but I already have my favorite classes and favorite students. I already have a handful of students I am ready to get rid of at any second. Luckily the semester is only 3 months, so hopefully I will not have them in a class next semester.

Here is an overall update on how my classes have been going:

My first class of MWF is my very troublesome class. On Monday the students locked me out of the classroom. Thanks. Timeouts really don't seem to work on these kids. Sunny, Arthur, and Brian are the three trouble makers. I have a new rule now: When you are in a time out - you need to sit with both of your hands raised above your head. Sitting in a chair in the corner is too easy; the new time out hurts. It is actually starting to work and get through their brains that this is not fun. I don't mind being the bad ass teacher.

I have had two kids poop their pants in class. One is 9 years old, the other is 10. I must've scared the shit right out of them. Wonderful.

My favorite students so far are Gary, Max, Laura, and Rachel. Gary is the one who has the extremely squinty eyes. I usually can not tell if his eyes are open or shut. He is very smart and well behaved. When I asked the students what "pretty" means, he said "Teacher! Teacher is very pretty!" Instant points. I told them that a baby goat is called a kid. I then explained that they are also kids. Gary responded with, "I am little man! I am little man!" Whenever he understands something, or has the answer to something, he says "Bingo! Bingo!" So, today I played bingo with the class, so he could say Bingo and actually mean it.

Max is adorable. He is 10 years old and has little plastic rimmed glasses. He will definitely be a heart breaker some day. He is in my class with two students, the class that barely speaks. They are coming around as they gain more confidence. Today, during Bingo, I spread all of the chips on the table, and let them take turns picking up a chip and saying the vocab word. I asked who wanted to go first, and he responded with, "Ladies first," as he pointed to Amy.

Laura is also very smart. She is 8 years old. Every time I ask her a question, she looks at me with almost crossed eyes with a very concerned look on her face. "Teacher, this?" as she points to a part in the book.

And Rachel. Oh, Rachel. She is the tiniest little thing. She was a new student on the second day of class. I was taking attendance and was calling off names. Now, as in any foreign language class... when you start taking the language, you pick a name that relates to the language or your teacher will assign you a name. This is why all of my students have English sounding names. One of my students in the class has the name of Eunice. No joke. Eunice.

So on the second day when I had two girls raise their hands that their name was Eunice, I did not believe them. There is no chance that two teachers gave their students Eunice as a name. And there was also no way I was going to have two Eunices in one class. I figured the new Eunice misunderstood my question.

So I asked the new one if she had an English name. She nodded yes. I asked her what her English name was. She was quiet. I named her Rachel. I asked her if she liked the name Rachel and she nodded yes, with a confused look on her face. I got the new roster the next day... and sure as shit, her English name was also Eunice. She responds to Rachel now, but every now and then get a confused look on her face when I call on Eunice. Oopse.

I was just given a new class. It is a storytelling class. There are four students in the class. One of the students is the Headmaster's daughter. This week we are reading Hansel and Gretel. After I read the story we were supposed to make gingerbread houses and then eat them. These are the supplies I was given to construct gingerbread houses: a loaf of bread, wafer cookies, peanut m&m's, chocolate sticks, and syrup. Really?

I took some pictures of my storytelling class... so here they are!




This is Alex. Check out that sweet gingerbread house.




This is the headmaster's daughter Jully. It is pronounced like Julie.


This is Laura.




The kids and their houses. Grace, Alex, Laura, Jully.




Time to eat the houses! They whipped out their chopsticks to eat them.



Grace, looking less than impressed... eating her chocolate stick with chopsticks. I think it'd be easier with fingers, but that's just me.

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