The Little Thursday That Could...

So, last night there was a meeting between the left and right sides of my brain. They agreed that I am a buffoon and that, for some reason, it's not their fault. The reason I mention this is because I have no clever April Fools Day post to fool you all into thinking I'm coming home early or anything. I doubt you would have believed it anyway. You know how much fun I'm having here, generally. Now if I could only get a guitar.

Anyway, I cleaned my apartment, finally. I learned "The Scientist" on my accordion because it's so simple and it was playing on my iPod when I got the idea. "Right place, right time" type of thing. I also began painting. Ooh, boy, I know you're excited.

It's been raining for most of the day today. I wasn't expecting this because when I awoke from my consistently strange slumber it was only foggy. I now know to pack an umbrella with me anyway.

So, today while I was walking around my classroom kind of bored while my co-teacher did a vast majority of the teaching, I was thinking to myself how awesome it would be if I had a class all to myself. I would have so much fun with the kids. Generally, I laugh and they laugh, so it's a pleasant exchange when I get the chance to teach them something. I got to inform them that today was April Fools Day, but also that if they tried to fool me, I would beat them up.

So anyway, I got my wish because this afternoon I had my first "teacher training" class where I was the sole teacher. Like everything else, I was not really told anything about this class, so I had no idea what to expect. I prepared a pretty simple lesson about greetings and the difference between first meeting someone and an old friend, including hand shaking etiquette, etc. When the time came and only one teacher came in and sat down, I knew this was going to be a long 50 minutes. By the time the trickling stopped, I had six teachers, all female, one of them being my co-teacher. What I had planned didn't really work with just six women. So, I went through a variation of my original plan, which was met with limited success. There were three teachers whose English was actually pretty good, and then three who barely said anything except when I made them.

When I finished, I asked if there were any questions, and what I got was, "do you have a curriculum planned for this class?" Well, lady, not yet because I had no idea what to expect. This was an introductory class for both of us. Now that I know what to expect, I will plan accordingly. It was actually a good question because it gave me the opportunity to ask them if there were any specific topics they wanted me to cover. The class is small enough that I can cater to individuals pretty sufficiently. Needless to say, it was completely different than teaching thirty+ 11 year olds and certainly different from what I expected. And, as with everything else, teaching this type of class will take practice to get better at. I did OK. At least I had enough material to last the entire class. That would have been much worse if I ran out 15 minutes early and just had them play hangman until I stopped crying.