Life is crazy and it doesn't seem to slow down. The last few days have flown by.
Tuesday, Jason got to sub for the first time. He was in the 4 year old class. I asked him how it went at the end of the day and he said, "Fine, but I think I would prefer secondary". I'm sure he had fun though. He was singing "Shake the wiggles out" later on in the day and said he did it with his class. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall watching him as he figured out what to do with all the little ones who don't really understand him. Afterwards, he got to talk to Dr. Zhang for a while and he is going to give Jason's name out for any students who need tutoring and pass his phone number along to the team leaders for subbing. I think he'll be able to work quite a bit while we're here.
I'm finally starting to get a feel for my students and their level. Now I can start really planning and getting some things ready. Most of what I planned from before is a bit too hard for them, so I'm going to have to push it back. Yesterday was a bit eye-opening for me when I started some of the science stuff for the first time with the 8th graders. I just planned some things with vocabulary that was way over their heads. So, now I think I know more of what kinds of things to do with them. I get so excited about things that I'm planning and forget that they really do need to just go over the basic vocabulary words before we can do some of the fun projects that I have in mind. I guess it would probably be good for me to imagine trying to do all of the assignments in French or something and that would give me a better idea of what I'm asking of my students. Their English is probably better than my French, but it's still probably a good guage for me.
Today is a long day for me. I teach 5 classes but I don't have any preps because we have a staff meeting during one and a meeting with the Chinese teachers during the other one, so it's a lot different than I'm used to. I was going to stay at work during lunch to prep but I was starving and thought it would be a nice break to see my family. Well, Jason and Haley are asleep and Britton is upstairs playing with Jonas. So much for hanging out with them. At least I get a chance to blog for a moment. All the prep time that I thought I was going to have is slowly dwindling as they schedule clubs and staff meetings, etc. It seems like Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I don't have really any time to prep. Luckily, Monday and Tuesday I get several hours. For clubs though, I get to do girl's sports. I'm excited about that. We're going to see how many are interested and then decide which sports we want to do. I know badminton is huge here, so we'll probably do some badminton tournaments and then volleyball and basketball for sure.
Well, I need to head back over to school.
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It's fun to imagine Jason with a bunch of four-year-old chinese children. Actually, it's just fun to imagine of classroom of four-year-old chinese children. Period. It would probably be fun to do sports so that you and the girls can see different sides of each other--that always helps, I think.
I remember the most effective language lessons in the MTC were when we never said the English equivalent of the word that we were learning. Instead, the teacher showed a picture, or acted it out in some way. This way, we were able to internalize the concepts without having the English word stuck in the way. Just a thought. And it was fun for the teacher to think of actions for the more abstract words.
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