On the way home, the bus was so packed, I was practically sitting on the bus driver's lap. For all its social awkwardness, the front-row view was amazing! The panoramic vista of our four-story tiled school and the Mediterranean-inspired Country Garden villas just unfolded in front of us, twist upon turn as we toddled down the road.
I relished the thought of the delicious dinner we had at our favorite dive, 'The Dessert Restaurant'. It was so named for all the sweet things on the menu and its cheap prices!
We can order as many as 6 things without breaking a financial sweat. (Might add up to like $6.50.) Some of our favorite menu items are deep-fried peanut-butter filled french toast, fresh mango, dragonfruit and jellies in coconut milk and barbequed garlic eggplant.
My restaurant outing was a welcome relief. It’s been a tough week here at Guangdong Country Garden International School. I have had some difficult classes in the midst of some wonderful ones. What a learning curve I should have expected—teaching through miscommunications and different management expectations.
These last couple of days, my teaching style has been affected by fear. Which class will make me want to cry? In which class will my lesson fail? Which class will rise up never to be brought back to order again? These thoughts haunt me some days.
This kind of thing can happen class after class. Another problem is I forget which classes are good and which ones are bad. I start coming down hard on good classes and going easy on bad classes. This creates a weird mix of student behavior. Arg. I have persevered however, and with the help of class monitors, am feeling more like the authority figure I should be.
I have to say, my students are an eager bunch. When they know what they are doing, they go for it. Earlier today I gave them a worksheet, and they colored it so ferociously they looked like they had been let out of a cage and their first act of freedom was to color. :] For the next 20 minutes all you heard in the classroom was the strumming rhythm of crayon against paper.
I teach in a boarding school. My students are in class from 7:20 am till 9:00 at night. They have breaks for lunch and dinner/PE and playtime but it’s a pretty much classroom, lunch room, dormitory, classroom, lunchroom, dormitory. They probably don’t get much time to color. That makes me sad.
Students of privilege should be the very ones who have time to express themselves. I think the staff depend on the foreign teachers to provide that kind of thing. One Chinese teacher even mildly rebuked me for not taking them to the library. If he only knew how badly they behaved, he wouldn’t have made me feel bad. (Since this posting, I have taken them to the library and they have behaved much better.)
In some of my classes--and these are students from very wealthy families--the students don’t even have crayons. The thought of not having crayons—or any coloring device--deeply saddens me. Maybe that will be on my class supplies request list. Yeah, I asked before, and they referred me over to the supply room and signed me out for a few packs of art class crayons. Great quality, but not enough to keep all the students occupied.
Before I ramble on to the place of no return...I should mention my surprise trip to Hong Kong.
In the next post...
I relished the thought of the delicious dinner we had at our favorite dive, 'The Dessert Restaurant'. It was so named for all the sweet things on the menu and its cheap prices!
We can order as many as 6 things without breaking a financial sweat. (Might add up to like $6.50.) Some of our favorite menu items are deep-fried peanut-butter filled french toast, fresh mango, dragonfruit and jellies in coconut milk and barbequed garlic eggplant.
My restaurant outing was a welcome relief. It’s been a tough week here at Guangdong Country Garden International School. I have had some difficult classes in the midst of some wonderful ones. What a learning curve I should have expected—teaching through miscommunications and different management expectations.
These last couple of days, my teaching style has been affected by fear. Which class will make me want to cry? In which class will my lesson fail? Which class will rise up never to be brought back to order again? These thoughts haunt me some days.
This kind of thing can happen class after class. Another problem is I forget which classes are good and which ones are bad. I start coming down hard on good classes and going easy on bad classes. This creates a weird mix of student behavior. Arg. I have persevered however, and with the help of class monitors, am feeling more like the authority figure I should be.
I have to say, my students are an eager bunch. When they know what they are doing, they go for it. Earlier today I gave them a worksheet, and they colored it so ferociously they looked like they had been let out of a cage and their first act of freedom was to color. :] For the next 20 minutes all you heard in the classroom was the strumming rhythm of crayon against paper.
I teach in a boarding school. My students are in class from 7:20 am till 9:00 at night. They have breaks for lunch and dinner/PE and playtime but it’s a pretty much classroom, lunch room, dormitory, classroom, lunchroom, dormitory. They probably don’t get much time to color. That makes me sad.
Students of privilege should be the very ones who have time to express themselves. I think the staff depend on the foreign teachers to provide that kind of thing. One Chinese teacher even mildly rebuked me for not taking them to the library. If he only knew how badly they behaved, he wouldn’t have made me feel bad. (Since this posting, I have taken them to the library and they have behaved much better.)
In some of my classes--and these are students from very wealthy families--the students don’t even have crayons. The thought of not having crayons—or any coloring device--deeply saddens me. Maybe that will be on my class supplies request list. Yeah, I asked before, and they referred me over to the supply room and signed me out for a few packs of art class crayons. Great quality, but not enough to keep all the students occupied.
Before I ramble on to the place of no return...I should mention my surprise trip to Hong Kong.
In the next post...
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