A little about behind the scenes

I'm feeling lots better after this weekend- maybe it was the mindless 4 hour session of Civ IV, which was nice, or maybe it's that I do feel better and am far less sick than I supposed, or maybe it's that I'm almost caught up in grading, which will be a feeling gone come next Wednesday.

Adam and I had a talk about last year's teachers and this year's teachers. Our students mention that we seem more serious than last year's teachers- I can't say for certain whether this is true or not. But all teachers put so much time in our lesson plans- there's not a lot of free time during the week. We all assign homework, which means we have to grade it. (I assign quizzes, which mean I have to grade them. This semester I have assigned projects and homework). We are constantly working on lesson plans, sometimes having planned them weeks in advance. And I'm constantly running around for so many materials because they are scare in my audio-visual and survey course, that I feel breathless by the end of the day.

Adam was talking about creating his own course book. I'm tempted to steal his notes- they're quite useful, and we're all trying to prepare them as best we can into what they're supposed to learn.

Adam and Will teach their writing students about different types of writing: Argumentative Essays, Narrative Essays, (I'm forgetting a type), and Research Paper. They're also teaching resumes, paragraphs, and trying to transition the students from paragraphs to papers. It's a hard task, and I don't envy them for it. The two of them have it down to an art.

Ann and Ben teach their Reading and Listening students how to read, too. The biggest challenge in reading is teaching the kids to not stop when they see a new word. Sometimes you get so focused on those words (when you study a foreign language) that you loose the meaning and the structure of the sentence. In our own languages, we teach our children to learn this skill, of guessing words and skipping them over- it's called "context clues". It helps.

In their listening, it's become more and more like my audio-visual class last semester, practicing things like context questions, fill-in-the blank, and trying to discern accents from one another.

For myself, I sadly do not share any classes with them. Instead, I have the Survey Course, which I have to pound 5 countries into a 16-week semester (cry), and the audio-visual, which I thought will focus more on culture, accent, and history than before. There will still be listening. There will still be context clues. But I want to talk about culture differences. "The Office" was a great way to observe this.

Even though I'm repeating the same class, I'm teaching an additional 120 students with it, and that means longer grading hours. I'm not about to stop the quizzes, though, because I'm here for the students benefit. I'm going to keep assigning homework because it helps them- I see this now, as I'm on the opposite end of the student-teacher spectrum.

My sophomores have called me the strictest teacher they have ever had. Good. I'm strict because they need to learn. (My audio-visual classes don't need the same strictness, but I've also told people they can turn off cell phones or leave). I'm strict, not because I want to be (that is a plus), but because there isn't any time for nonsense.

That's just not their nonsense, though. That's mine. Earlier in February I was poking around the internet and I found a flight back home for about $1000 round-trip. I thought about how much fun it would be to poke around for about a week and to return home. I thought about how much fun it would be to bring back snacks to share with the students. I could bring back cheese or jello for the people here. I could spend time with ~Daisy~.

But they were only fantasies. I wouldn't dream of taking a week off this semester unless I was ill or hospitalized. It's unfair to the students. Each week is precious, each hour we spend in class helps them. Each assignment is designed to help them understand something.

I'm not sure if I could write a book, but certainly, I would love to pass on the lesson plans. I'm curious to know if next year's teachers will be as serious about teaching as we are when we came. We arrived, settled in, and right from the get-go made lesson plans, planning our semesters, homework assignments and new that we were here to work. And I'm glad for that- I enjoy being able to plan, to grade, even if it is mind-numbing and time-consuming.