Hi!
I haven't done anything that exciting in a while, but I'm going to Japan at the end of the month, so hopefully that will be interesting. This last weekend we said farewell to one of the teachers. She had been here two years and she is the first to go during my year here. In two months another one will go, and then a month or so later another two will go. Of course, they will be replaced by new people. It's such a transient job. It's nice to get to know people for a little bit, but in the grand scheme of things it is for such a short length of time.
Work is better than it was a few months ago. My class is still quite unruly. It's kind of a known fact that I have the worst class. It may be in part because of my lack of teaching skill, but I definitely think there are factors beyond my control. I have twelve students. Six of them are boys, two of these are pretty much uncontrollable, three of them join in easily, and they occasionally suck in the sixth. This means that no matter what technique I try to get them quiet, they are not quiet enough for me to get a word in edgewise. As I said, things are definitely better than when I first started and none of them knew any English, but they are still a challenge most days. I do have to say though, if I can survive them I can survive any class. My other classes are nothing compared to them. Thank goodness, or I would have gone insane by know.
I do have to say, as difficult as they can be, most of them can be super sweet and cute. Not so much when they are beating on each other, or running around the room, yelling, and flailing their arms over their heads, but they can be enjoyable now and again. They are learning English pretty well, and are picking up things pretty fast. Some are picking it up faster than others, but that happens when some just stare at the wall, or the ceiling, or the floor, or the desk, or at their hands, pretty much anywhere but where I need them to look. They are reading more and more words and can read simple stories on their own. This is pretty impressive considering four months ago they didn't even know the alphabet. The credit doesn't all go to me. I share the class with a pretty amazing teacher, and she feels the same way as I do about them. She finds them very challenging as well, and she's magic.
I have two really challenging students. The one started with a broken arm and still managed to get into at least one physical altercation a day for the first two months. He always has a smile on his face, even when you are telling him to stop. He loves to sing, but only when I'm talking, not when we are all singing a song together. Last week he kicked a kid in the head because the kid hit him in the arm with a piece of paper. A couple days ago he threw his activity book on the ground because he thought it would be hilarious, and how he laughed. This kid also cannot stay seated more than five seconds. Actually he may be up to ten seconds now. He is improving. Every time I turn around he is out of his seat, bothering someone. Again improvement, because the first two months every time I turned around he got out of his seat and hit someone. Ahhh, the joys of progress!
The other boy, also has problems sitting down, but isn't as bad. Unlike the last boy, this one has no real fear of me. So, he will just refuse to do things. He also get in physical altercations. He was the boy who got kicked in the head for hitting the other boy with paper. Today, he was thrown hard against a wall and had his face scratched by a boy that doesn't usually do things like that, so he may or may not have aggravated the other boy to that point. This boy, too, thinks he's hilarious and is always performing for his classmates. However, when you punish this one he laughs in your face, and may feign remorse before going back and doing the same things again. A few weeks ago, one of the other teachers said he was spitting in his shirt, collecting a nice little pool of spit. Then he began encouraging the other boys to join him, which they did. He apparently felt they weren't doing a very good job, because he then started spitting into their shirts. The teacher looked shell shocked, as I know I have after some classes with them.
So, this is the fun I deal with on a daily basis. As I've said it isn't all bad, but there are definitely days I think I may be insane.
Take care all!
