These first two weeks of teaching have been some of the most challenging I've ever had. These kids are tough. Most of them. If you're lucky, you have a couple of students who actually interact in the front of the class. The rest either sleep, make noise, or stare blankly. Despite our best efforts to create interesting lesson plans, they haven't been working because the kids are completely un-interactive. We're getting a little better, but we've felt like we've been drowning since last Tuesday.
It wouldn't even be all that bad, but our resources are severely limited. The printer in our office has no ink and despite many requests it doesn't seem to be a big priority. We each have 300 students so if we want to give a handout to our classes we have to get 300 (600 if we use the same one) copies made. Also wouldn't be a big deal except that they make all their copies 2 pages side by side on double wide paper. Which means we have to use a feeble pair of scissors and hand-cut the entire stack in small chunks. For 300 copies, this has been taking at least half an hour.
We've perused ESL websites and lesson plans but we read each one and imagine trying to implement it in our class and 9 out of 10 there is no possible way it could ever work. I would really really love to fail kids. I have 2nd year students who really do not know more than "Hello my name is...". 2nd year! They should have failed, and probably were by the previous teachers, but nope, still here, making my life miserable.
On a happier note, we saw our first star in China tonight! Just one very bright star poking through the smog, but it was a star! Also, they have Oreo's at the school canteen!
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3 comments:
I'm glad you're keeping the attitude of Dori!
Also, try to remember what it was like before printers and copiers - oh, wait, you weren't born then. :-)
Children showed some respect then.
Hi. My name is Anna. Good luck with those classes. Ignore the jerks and concentrate on those who want to learn. Most of them aren't bad kids... but your class is definitely the blow-off one and even the good ones will slack off now and then. The kids know *way* more vocabulary than you think, but they've never said it out loud except in repetition. Your real goal is not teaching them new vocabulary, but getting them to use what they know. Soccer is an excellent way to get in good with the computer and Japanese-language teachers. Your printer is a lost caused. The ink in town is usually fake and gums up the machine.
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