Fruits of the Labor
The work is actually getting better this week. I am on standby on Mondays, which honestly kinda sucks, but I’m looking at it as a wild-card day. It’s also nice that I won’t have to do student reports for those five classes. Tuesday was really good. I work at a kindergarten all day, and it is a great school. The kids are adorable, and they are really smart. They have gotten used to me and my TT, so now they know our signals, even the K1s who are only 2-3. We we tell them to hush, they actually do it.
Today was a pretty good day as well. It used to be a totally crap day for me, but I laid the smack down on my bad classes last week. This week, they were quite well behaved. It was really nice to see the discipline being effective. There were three other teaching teams from Fun Language at that school today as well, and one of them was threatening to send naughty students to my TT if they were bad. Apparently, it worked. She is pretty feisty.
Food was really good today as well. I had this garlic chicken thing at lunch which was really nice. I was getting tired of eating fried rice so I got some of the Thai teachers to recommend me something. This is surprisingly hard to do. Every time I’m out with them, I ask them what to order. They almost always say fried rice or basil chicken. Both are good, but I like a little variety. The restaurants don’t have menus, and when you ask a Thai person what they have, they generally say, “They have everything.” I tell them I want a burger. I had some Greek food in my apartment this afternoon which was a welcome change as well. It was just feta cheese with olives, tomatoes, onions, and bread, but it was quite nice to eat something besides rice. I went to a Japanese place with some friends at the night, and that was one of the most amazing meals I have had in a long time. We shared pot stickers, fried pork, and some sushi. It was amazing.
Tomorrow I’m heading to a new school. For some weird reasons I haven’t been to this one yet. It’s another day of all kindergarten, and I’m teaching phonics the whole day. Hopefully, it will go alright. Friday is my super fantastic day. I have four classes; I’m done before lunch. It is magnificent.
jared said:
Jun 30, 07 at 12:27 amjust out of curiosity, what exactly did it entail when you put the smack down on your students?
scott said:
Jun 30, 07 at 6:51 amI beat one of them with a cane. Corporal punishment is perfectly acceptable here.
Spare the rod, spoil the child.
scott said:
Jun 30, 07 at 7:03 amI was going to wait for a response, but I’m afraid I’ll forget. I, obviously, don’t beat the kids.
At the recommendation of one of the trainers, I put them in a structured seating arrangement. There were four teams of about 5-6 students. I gave each team 3 beanbags. I took away beanbags when they were bad gave them beanbags when they were good. If any team gets to zero beanbags, no games for the entire class. If they make it through the class without that happening, the team with the most beanbags gets candy.
Last week, three teams got to zero in a simultaneous explosion of badness during the first game. They sat in silence for most of the rest of the lesson, though I did drill the language structure with them a few more times. This week, they were much better. I got to give out candy.
jared said:
Jun 30, 07 at 11:27 amhahaha. that would have been somewhat funny, albeit sad. anyway, i should have known… candy works wonders for little kids.
Thomas Morris said:
Sep 06, 10 at 4:08 amGreek Foods are tasty and delicious maybe because of the spices they put in it~,;