During the last term of study for one of my classes, the students had to write 1,000 word essays on assigned topics. One of my students chose the poverty topic, and wanted to focus on Africa. We had a thirteen week long battle about Africa, revolving around the fact that it’s a continent, not a [...]
I had a good class with the doctors last week. We did a unit on crime, and I made them solve a murder mystery that I wrote myself. I was sort of proud of it - mysteries aren’t easy to write, even when you’re not feeling even the slightest bit hindered by plausibility. I told [...]
One of the nicest things about my job (other than the chance to work with some of the most awesome people ever - thank you thank you thank you coworkers for Friday night - I’ve almost recovered from the shock and the unspeakable mixed drinks) is the extra temp stuff that gets tossed our way [...]
Number One Teaching No-No: Students do not equal friends. I’ve learned this over the last year, and now I’ve taught a few new classes where I maintained enough distance between me and my students to be able to do my job and stay in control of the classroom. This was not the case for my [...]
A while back, three students came running into my class five or six minutes late. Technically, they’re not allowed in the classroom after the bell rings, but these three had never been late before, always did their homework, and generally never made me angry. Plus, we were reviewing for an exam, and five minutes didn’t [...]
Ok, if you’re teaching ESL and you’ve just finished exams and have two hours to burn with a class just before a holiday, I had better luck showing E.T. than I’ve ever had with a film in class before (note to any coworkers reading: I obtained appropriate permission to show a movie, complete with an [...]
God almighty. Next week is finals week, and I’m limping toward the finish line. I’m tired, my students are tired, we’re all sick of each other, and I’m really ready to have a break. Today my IELTS class did a unit on water conservation, and somehow the discussion drifted from ways to conserve water to [...]
That’s my city!
Saturday I went to Castle Bar with some friends and coworkers to see the Shanghai band Banana Monkey. There were posters plastered all over town for this, showing a guy in a gas mask looking very punk rock.
I’ve got to admit that I’ve had a pretty snotty attitude toward Chinese music - most [...]
The success story:
For lunch, I went to Skyways, which is a German bakery a block away from my house that makes tasty sandwiches. It’s also very nice from a bumbling foreigner perspective, because you fill out a little card (in English), hand it to the cashier along with your 20 RMB, and that’s all there [...]
OOF oof oof. Survived. Good god, this profession is something else. I was frantically preparing for class until around 11:30 last night (preparation, for me, involves a lot of hand wringing and moaning that I don’t know what I’m doing), and then woke up totally scared and nervous at 4 am and could not fall [...]