Friday rundown

It's beautiful outside and Friday, so today's been rough with actually doing productive work with my students. This semester, my co-teacher has changed the structure of a lot of the classes I have with him. He's done a great thing by grouping students by what level their at, so in 1 class there are 3 different things going on. This puts me in charge of some students, and he'll often come in and instruct when needed- there's a pretty good unspoken balance happening now. I have to prepare 2 students for a speech contest sometime next month. One is terrified, and the other definitely just isn't interested- at least until I got him to a topic where he could talk about food. 

My co-teacher added 2 periods onto my schedule- a 5th class with the student who lived in America for a number of years. I got him hooked on Anthony Bourdain during vacation, so I've turned the extra class into a Bourdain hour with him. He needs a break from 4 days of doing whatever it is I make him do in class. And really, I need a break, too.  Besides, he talks through most of the show, so he's still getting good conversation practice. The other extra class is with 2 students for some review of whatever I want to do. Today was the first time I met with them, and I wanted to review body parts. And it was semi- genius, if I may inflate my ego for a minute. I started with having them draw a person with whatever number of heads or arms or whatever I asked. When they got the hang of what I was doing with them, I had them choose how many of the other limbs. Listening and application rolled into one. Then I pulled out the candy, and modeled, and explained, and modeled again until they finally understood what we were going to do with it- make candy people! Now if I can only keep this class entertaining for the rest of the year... I'm glad to have it though, because I get to do things I did a lot at home and haven't really had chances to do here yet. 


I ended up sharing the rest of the candy in the teacher's office after sending as much as I could with the students. Who knew adults would really be interested in marshmallows? The Korean ones smell like a bathroom- no offense.