Thursday, November 14, 2013

Oct 15 2013: I'm a Normal Human Being

Up and early start! Definitely a bit rough- Tuesdays we’re up and out earlier than usual for breakfast. Again, like last week, it was awesome! Lots of bread, eggs in the rice, Katie’s favorite bean dish and our pick of the week, egg rolls.

Our first egg rolls in China!

They actually weren’t too spectacular, to be honest. Nothing special. They were cold but still a bit crunchy and similar to lumpia but without meat. Size and everything was the same, though, yes. Pretty awesome- we couldn’t get over it all morning!

Grade 3 Class 2 is my crazy class who I taught first that day. I never got through all of Halloween Costumes- except they were way out of control again, so I stopped that and had them pull out their books. Nothing much happened in class because I was trying to get them under control. These kids are so deceiving! They love helping you to class and even cry out how much they love you afterwards- but during class, they go crazy. I don’t really get it.

Katie’s class was similar, attacking her over the stickers. Touchy subject with first graders and all. She’s been getting down a discipline system though. They were very upset not about missing out on stickers or a DVD the other day, but not getting an A+ and there was apparently a kid nearly in tears, which is very sad.
Yeah, one of my classes I gave a C because we put up grades on the board at the end of class. But they were very persistent and climbed on chairs to erase it.

Lunch was pretty tasty, and again Katie headed off.

Internet stopped working after a bit while I was in the middle of planning the next few lessons, which was a big bother and ruined everything. So I just read the second Harry Potter book for a bit to keep me busy. Sorted out a few future games, but nothing that my classes were ready for yet.

I don’t know if it was my frustration over the week’s first three classes, but the following ones didn’t go as well, either. There was more confusion about DVD’s with some of them, but we never ended up getting to them. The kids kept talking. I never had any of the classes wholly silent for more than a few seconds.

Grade 3 Class 3 is usually one of the good ones and they were my final class for the day. I brought stickers just in case. I thought I’d be fun and stray from the book and go over Halloween fun with them as well. They were very enthusiastic- too much, to be honest. I couldn’t get them called down after any pictures so I skipped several slides and finally shut it down and had the kids go to their books.

I found a category where they get to draw out their own picture book but that was tricky to translate over. Also, drawing usually keeps them pretty quiet but making it such a specific assignment kept them turning to their neighbors and down the aisle to sort it out or something.

Fortunately, about three kids sorted out the basic idea, and I helped them continue with that. They had a hard time writing down a few basic words- they add the main words like ‘mouse’ and ‘cat’ [it was supposed to be about mice] but they don’t always spell it right and don’t add the little words. Still, I gave out about 3 stickers and that was pretty impressive.

Dinner wasn’t too special, so Katie and I soon headed out to play with the kids. It was mostly Katie’s kids playing around, and we played hand games for a bit before they got called inside. The timing is definitely off, because we only played with them for ten minutes! It’s a little frustrating sometimes.


Anyways, Katie and I soon headed home. Tonight there was a winter chill in the air, tempting me to shiver within my sweater. We need to get earmuffs, it’s been decided! Then we spent the evening reading and writing and listening to music. And trying to get Katie to say ‘I’m a normal human being’ without laughing- now that was a good one. 

No comments:

Post a Comment