Well, I have actually had some teaching time today!
It started off poorly, but better than yesterday, with me getting two lots of half an hour with both 3rd grade classes. This meant that I was actually able to do my power-point and two of the vocab exercises (but not the game). My relationship with Mr Beak is so... I don't know. On the one hand he infuriates me! Like, he will walk in to the class over five minutes late, and I've started without him, but he walks in and interrupts with his own stuff. Like, excuse me, but you're late and I'm teaching here! Or, the students were taking forever to go to their seats, so I started counting backwards from 5. This actually got everyone moving nicely and by '2' the students were all almost down. So, by '0' I've got them all seated and am about to start, when he takes over and spends 2 minutes speaking in Korean and rearranging their seating positions. Um, I've just taken (albeit slight) disciplinary measures to get them all seated, and you are now disrupting my class with getting them moved again. Grrr!
But then, on the other hand, he is endlessly helpful. He backs me up without question in my lessons. Like, he very quickly will translate what I'm saying into Korean if the kids aren't getting it. This is a bit annoying as it doesn't help me improve as a teacher, or help them improve at listening to spoken English instructions, but it IS very kind of him to help. He also delivered my Korean to English dictionaries this morning. And seriously, I only mentioned that I'd like some once! And he ordered me a whole lot for the English room. So, I find him a very annoying, confusing person, but also feel guilty because he is so helpful. He also nearly always tells me about schedule changes before they happen, which is more that I've heard about some other co-teachers. Ah well, like Dad says: you can't have fine wool without horns. I can't have information without annoyance.
Ok, so other than that, my second two lessons were awesome! I got to teach the whole time
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I taught them about Santa and introduced a letter writing competition where they have to write a letter to Santa and give it to me in about a week, and then I'll judge them and the awesome ones will get prizes :) I hope at least a few actually hand in a letter. I'm going to feel a bit lame if they all just ignore me. Haha, when I was talking about Santa, they told me Santa brings presents to kind children. I asked what he does for bad children, and in nearly every class one of the boys has suggested that Santa beats up bad kids! I hate to think where that's coming from :s One kid also told me that Santa lives in 'Santa's Kingdom' which is possibly in Thailand (?!). Not sure where that came from either.
I taught two classes on 2nd graders the EXACT same lesson today, and the classes were soooo different. I can do the lessons almost word for word, so the difference has to be the students. In one class they were interested and engaged, funny, and answered my questions with enthusiasm. I read out this kids Christmas letter, and they found it really funny.
The other class? Nothing. Zip. Zero. Silence. I waited, I prompted, I talked, I stayed quiet... the only thing I could get answers to were closed or one word answer questions. They seemed completely unable to think on their own. It was a weird contrast. But, I got through it :)
And now it's an hour till home time!
No comments:
Post a Comment