These ducks are so f**king naughty!
One of the lessons I am teaching tomorrow for 3rd grade has a story about naughty ducks. It's the age old story: kids go out on lake, kids feed bread to ducks, ducks get all kinds of mischievious ideas (as ducks are wont to do). I have to make fun of it or else I will go crazy. Seriously, that my students learn anything is a miracle beyond all miracles. I'm pretty sure that I am the most well-liked (and therefore least respected) teacher in the school. I don't give homework, I am completely incapable of punishing anyone (which granted is not completely my fault because I don't speak Chinese) and I give stickers to any kid who asks for one regardless of whether he's well-behaved or not. They're all just so damned cute, I can't help it.
Every day I teach I get a little less frightened at the prospect of teaching. I am hoping that one day I will wake up in the morning actually WANTING to go to school instead of dreading it. I think part of this fear stems from the fact that my first day I was literally thrown in front of 30 kids with no curriculum, no book, no materials, no teacher's aide. Anyone who's taught ESL knows how awful that can be. It's gotten a lot better - now, for instance it takes me 1 hour to plan a lesson, whereas before it could take me all weekend. Which is good, because I have 16 classes to plan for every week.
I teach around 500 kids in all different grades, which means I have to learn a lot of names. I try to learn at least one new kid's name every day, but since 99% of them are either Gary, Jerry, Tina, Frank, Bob, Amy or Nancy its a pretty feasible task. Although I do occasionally have to stifle my laughter when a kid looks me straight in the face and announces in all seriousness that his name is Snoopy. Or Banana. Or Charlemagne. A teacher that I work with has a student named iFred. As in iPod. Apparently all the cool people are adding a lowercase i to the beginning of their names.
Every day I teach I get a little less frightened at the prospect of teaching. I am hoping that one day I will wake up in the morning actually WANTING to go to school instead of dreading it. I think part of this fear stems from the fact that my first day I was literally thrown in front of 30 kids with no curriculum, no book, no materials, no teacher's aide. Anyone who's taught ESL knows how awful that can be. It's gotten a lot better - now, for instance it takes me 1 hour to plan a lesson, whereas before it could take me all weekend. Which is good, because I have 16 classes to plan for every week.
I teach around 500 kids in all different grades, which means I have to learn a lot of names. I try to learn at least one new kid's name every day, but since 99% of them are either Gary, Jerry, Tina, Frank, Bob, Amy or Nancy its a pretty feasible task. Although I do occasionally have to stifle my laughter when a kid looks me straight in the face and announces in all seriousness that his name is Snoopy. Or Banana. Or Charlemagne. A teacher that I work with has a student named iFred. As in iPod. Apparently all the cool people are adding a lowercase i to the beginning of their names.