I have officially started my job as a teacher! It is very fun and very challenging work... I am left exhausted after a day of teaching. I teach 4th-9th graders (though, due to a change in the school system, there is no 6th grade this year... they are going from an 11 year system to 12). As it turns out, kids at those ages are snots across the world. But, I love my students... they are very passionate about learning and are super excited about learning English from an American.
Students start taking English in 4th grade. It is very excited to be be teaching them because I will be able to see how far they come in these two years. The 9th graders are a bit trickier. The first day of class, I had to teach them greetings because no one could respond to "How are you?" And they had been studying for 5 years. However, this is pretty common across the board. Most English teachers do not actually speak English. They teach directly out of the (GOD AWFUL) textbooks. All students can really do is read and write. It's really frustrating because I am expected to be teaching out of those textbooks but the material is waaaay too advanced for them. Hopefully my director won't find out that I have been totally ignoring the textbook so far...
On Mondays, I also teach the English Club which is really fun because I get to do whatever I want. We had a lesson on sports the other day and I taught them all about baseball. I brought in newspaper clippings of the Sox and Cubs and trained all my little minions to love the Sox and hate the Cubs. :)
Soon, I'll be starting 2 classes for adults in the evenings. I'm tired now... I can't imagine how tired I'll be then...
We have a computer lab (internetless), a cafeteria, and chalkboards that don't suck (trust me, that's a huge deal). It is only 1 year old, so mostly everything is "state of the art" - relatively speaking. We even have indoor plumbing, but for some unknown reason it is never used. Ever. Kids still go to the bathroom in the jothlons behind the school. I just don't understand it.
The other teachers are so nice... I really enjoy working with them. The gym teacher is currently training me to play table tennis so that I can compete with them in the spring. Watch out Forrestt.
And that... is that!
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