danlizbrasil (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} danlizbrasil) wrote,@ 2004-08-04 21:42:00 |
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Teacher, I don't understand....
It’s 9pm on a Wednesday night, and I cannot wait to go to bed. This is indeed a strange feeling. Jillian, I know you where you’re coming from—work changes your attitude about healthy bedtimes. My alarm now goes off at 5 in the morning, so 9pm sounds good to me. Besides the new schedule, there’s also the new experiences and challenges that are filling up my days. Teaching! At last, I’m the one giving the homework. Even better, I’m the one thinking up what’s going to happen. We’re not starting with books until next week, so this week was review in any manner we wsai ft. I’ve been devising activities for a variety of levels. I have seven classes which range from early intermediates aged 9 to 11 to the highest levels in the regular course track of the school, which has high school students and adults. For the earlier levels. I end up speaking a fair amount of Portuguese. When I can’t quite get at what I want, the quickest student usually figures it out and translates. Occasionally it even gives them an incentive to speak English. This first week hasn’t been tough so much as it’s been demanding. Literally everything is new to me, from the layout of the schools to their photocopy procedure (it’s like laundry, it gets sent out once a day and delivered at some point later). And, of course, the classroom is a completely unpredictable zone. Especially during the first week, when your class list can go from one student to fifteen in the five minutes before class starts. The other teachers have been really helpful, and it’s more of a relief than I expected to be able to converse in English with new people. The teaching staff is a mix of Brazilians who are fluent speakers (some of them former students of the school) and ex-pats. I love hearing the stories of how they happened to end up in Brazil. I’m liking it here a lot, but it’s still impossible to imagine that I might just never leave…. Yet that is what happened with most of these people. They came here for a visit and for one reason or another never left. Kind of crazy, eh?
Oh yeah, we finally have internet and a phone in our own apartment! I’ll email it out soon. Enjoy the last stretch of summer!
PS I'm pasting this in from word and it's doing a funny type thing... it's supposed to say 'as we saw fit' in line three.
It’s 9pm on a Wednesday night, and I cannot wait to go to bed. This is indeed a strange feeling. Jillian, I know you where you’re coming from—work changes your attitude about healthy bedtimes. My alarm now goes off at 5 in the morning, so 9pm sounds good to me. Besides the new schedule, there’s also the new experiences and challenges that are filling up my days. Teaching! At last, I’m the one giving the homework. Even better, I’m the one thinking up what’s going to happen. We’re not starting with books until next week, so this week was review in any manner we wsai ft. I’ve been devising activities for a variety of levels. I have seven classes which range from early intermediates aged 9 to 11 to the highest levels in the regular course track of the school, which has high school students and adults. For the earlier levels. I end up speaking a fair amount of Portuguese. When I can’t quite get at what I want, the quickest student usually figures it out and translates. Occasionally it even gives them an incentive to speak English. This first week hasn’t been tough so much as it’s been demanding. Literally everything is new to me, from the layout of the schools to their photocopy procedure (it’s like laundry, it gets sent out once a day and delivered at some point later). And, of course, the classroom is a completely unpredictable zone. Especially during the first week, when your class list can go from one student to fifteen in the five minutes before class starts. The other teachers have been really helpful, and it’s more of a relief than I expected to be able to converse in English with new people. The teaching staff is a mix of Brazilians who are fluent speakers (some of them former students of the school) and ex-pats. I love hearing the stories of how they happened to end up in Brazil. I’m liking it here a lot, but it’s still impossible to imagine that I might just never leave…. Yet that is what happened with most of these people. They came here for a visit and for one reason or another never left. Kind of crazy, eh?
Oh yeah, we finally have internet and a phone in our own apartment! I’ll email it out soon. Enjoy the last stretch of summer!
PS I'm pasting this in from word and it's doing a funny type thing... it's supposed to say 'as we saw fit' in line three.
