Still sick.
My first class of the day was in Margot’s class and we were reviewing animals. Since I forgot to make flashcards for all the animals, I ended up drawing some on the board…yeah, some were better than others. The dolphin was particularly bizarre looking, although I do sheep fairly well (they kinda look like clouds)… It was a pretty hilarious class because I taught them “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” and after singing it through a few times (they really get the E-I-E-I-O part), I made them all get up and try doing a do-si-do like “real American country dancing.” It was hysterical watching them try to figure it out!! And, of course, that was the moment that the teacher walked back into the room… she cracked up.
Luckily I had a break next, so I headed home and crawled back into bed. Sometimes when I’m teaching, it feels like I’m acting. I feel sick and grumpy and tired, but I pretend that I’m a cheery, interesting teacher and then act it out…but as soon as the class is over, I want to go back to bed.
After lunch, I biked over to the other school and had a halfway decent class with the little kids. We kept working on colors and they’re finally remembering them. They still get red and white mixed up (the words sound fairly similar to them), but overall they’re getting it. In the older kids class, we tried to finish the pen pal letters. Fail. Well, some kids managed to finish, but others…not so much. It’s amazing how it has a lot less to do with knowing English and a lot more to do with actually trying to work. With some of the students, if I’m not standing next to them, they’re talking and goofing off with whoever’s sitting near them. It’s exhausting because I explain something to one of them, then move on to the next kid, and the first kid just starts goofing off and hasn’t done anything when I check in on him later. Grr! And, to top it all, there’s a boy in the class who doesn’t seem to get along with most of the other boys and despite me trying to seat him as far away from most of the boys as possible (without making it obvious), things go wrong. The other boys provoke him and he clearly has a temper issue…so, today there were glue sticks and pens thrown across the room at each other and pushing/shoving… I would have sent them out of the room, but we were trying to send out the letters and I just wanted them to get done! In the end we didn’t finish all the letters, but most of the class is done. It was exhausting.
I biked home and went directly to teach the really difficult class. We worked on school supply vocabulary and the difference between “a” and “an.” I’m not sure if they really got it. But, we’ll work more on it next class.
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