Rule no.1: Teach the kids lies.
It kind of looks like she's teaching red doctrine. I won't use the 'C' word, as we all know the Chinese Firewall is quite famous ;)
Still smilin'
This western teacher is unshaven.
But don't worry, he will shave soon.
So just how large are these classes exactly?
Pretty bloody big..
3 comments:
Heya mate,
I have just been slowly making my way through your blog. Sounds like there is always something happening. Oh where to start eh?
The first thing is.. hats off for the frist chinese character menu ordering. Vey impressive! restaurant ordering can be a minefield of animals not normally in the western periodic table...and for a good reason, as we all know.
Secondly, on the English corner thing. I really don't know anything about your contract, or your agreements with the school, but this kind of thing (I hear) is common in both China and Korea....what with your boss, encouraging/ insisting that you do extra work, or settle for less of something, or go without an agreed appliance in your house/ time off...etc. You get the picture. It's hard I think, cos you obviously don't want to ruffle any feathers this early in the peace, but would rather stand your ground on the point, given the chance, and in fact, NOT work on days off at pimp's corner, church fete, or the English bikini carwash, or in fact any other unscheduled endeavor.
Like you said, maybe just try the "Next weekend we are in Shanghai...sorry", and see how that goes down I spose.
I wouldn't reccommend that you tell them:
a) you have to mow the lawn
b) your grandpa died (4th time in a month - same guy)
c) you'r painting the nursery room ( in their apartment )
I'm not sure if you've seen much on the internet, but if you need class ideas, let us know. We still know a friend or 2 out there teaching English for a crust,
(as opposed to just not showering for 3 days - hey presto *crust*). They might be able to reccommend some sites with plenty of ideas that others have done all of the hard yards on already.
Lets face it, you weren't expecting to have to come up with all of this stuff at the drop of a hat.
I spose the trick is to turn them on themselves. Be the instigator of games/ excerses, that they interact with each other. You don't even have to be directly involved ALOT of the time. Explain the excercise, then leave them to themselves. They are more likely to talk to each other - (as opposed to answering a scary question in front of the whole class - as long as its in english.
Smile alot - if you do anything else, just smile.
For example - if you split them in smaller groups to think of things that they might find in a supermarket, and you overhear someone say haemoroid - smile.
If they are trying to think of things you can do at the beach and someone says colon...hey they can colon all they like - as long as it's at their beach - smile!
Anyways, it sounds like you're both warming to the whole experience, and I can't think of anyone better equipped to handle all of this.
Hey matey,
Yeah that's what we discovered during the week - well kind of. We did a fill in class on True or False which i found on the net - it worked well, but the bits where we put them into groups they just FLEW through the stuff. I dont even know what the hell they were doing really. We paired them up(this might have been the problem - groups too small) - and asked them to read each other the 5 things about themselves, then the other had to guess which 3 were real, which 2 were fake. I think they just speed read each list to each other, threw out a few FALSE! TRUE! so i could hear then sat there. It took them longer to write them down - the key is time wasting really.
I have discovered that lots of chalkboard writing = good way to waste time.
If you could ask your friends if they frequent any resource sites, that would be great. At the moment we basically have nets out and are scouring the net for useable stuff.
cheers bro
hi i was reading you guys blog and i was wondering what kind of program you guys joined? were you guys already originally teachers?
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