fridays

On Fridays here I have two classes after lunch before I am free for the weekend. The classes are as different as a warm sunny day and the deepest dungeons of hell where demons chew on your toes. The first class I spent half the time talking over the kids and the other half asking/demanding that the kids be quiet. It is a shame because 2 or 3 girls are genuinely interested in learning English but the rest of the class kills that opportunity for them. I am considering next semester simply kicking out large portions of the class so that the students who want to learn actually can. It is one of the more frustrating things in the world when you spend 2 minutes asking a single kid to stop talking then the second you look away he begins again. Or when I write a term up on the board and immediately the kids start yelling at each other in Chinese. Then I ask them to stop and they reply that they didn't understand what the term means and they were just asking their friends. The concept that I can and will explain the term to them just does not seem to stick. Today I only managed to get through one third of my slides.

Then when I am giving up any hope for Chinese students, my final class of the week swoops down and pulls me from the brink. It is not that the students in the class have much better English (though they do), it is simply that they are really interested in learning English (which obviously contributes to them having better English). Both classes have a super high amount of energy, but the final class manages to use their energy to learn, laugh, volunteer, ask question, and make my day. I got through all the slides, played 10 minutes of games, and still had time to show them some hockey fights at the end. I don't know how the classes manage to be so entirely different, if it is because of their head teacher or some other reason. It's just quite a relief finishing the week up on a high note.

sorry if there are any problems with my spelling, grammar, etc. Too lazy right now to go back.