Something tells me this every day thing is only going to get more difficult as the year wears on. So really, this post is mostly just a quick update on my mostly uneventful day.
We did more co-teaching today, and it went MUCH better than yesterday. My co-teacher, Patty, is pretty quiet one-on-one, but I discovered today that she absolutely blossoms in front of a group of kids! It was great! We started out with a little interactive dialogue about us riding bikes/scooters, and she took off "on her scooter" to pretend to ram into the front row of students! It got them laughing and engaged, which is NOT easy to do.
Our time management was a little better, too--we got through all the vocabulary several times, played a game, and learned and practiced our sentence patterns (How do you go to school? I go to school by ________.); though we didn't quite make it to our last two activities, due in part to a time-eating magnet malfunctioning, it was a massive improvement over yesterday.
And now our co-teaching practice is over! Later this week we visit our own schools; next week, school starts. Time to actually prove ourselves, not just practice on hand-selected summer camp kids who know everything already.
I got my schedule today for Han-Min and Qing-Shan; it looks pretty sweet. My longest day is Monday, 9:30-3:00; Tuesday I only work 9:30-noon; Wednesday I have flag raising at 8:00 (early, but at least only once a week!), then teach 9:30-noon; Thursday I start late and work 11-4, and Friday is 8:40-noon. I officially love a (part-time teaching assistant) teacher's schedule!
Tomorrow we have a later start at Sanmin, which is good since I'm pretty sure we don't have much to do. Like I said, we finished co-teaching; we also finished, in my mind, talking about co-teaching: each 20-minute class was followed by a 20-minute discussion time, and we had a big-group discussion each afternoon, too. I don't really know what else there is to say, but I guess we'll find out!
In other news, there's still some drama going on in the ranks...hopefully it will all be happily settled soon. Also, we're going to take our scooter driver's license tests this week. Also, I'm going to the States this weekend. Yeah, just for the weekend. So that should be interesting!
And that's it, for now!
Sounds like today was a great day! You are like Patty, quiet until you are on stage! The pictures of you are great. You obviously teach with expression.
ReplyDeleteSo you will miss your first day of school and your longest day? Bummer. I thought school didn't start until September.
Can't wait to see you!
Mom