Busy
I have a ton to write! Seriously! Gone are the days when I could sit and expound on the potential intelligence my fan might contain. Now I’m busy and think all the time about writing and what I’d say if I had the chance. When I do have the chance, I’m usually too tired. Tonight, I’ve got to make a giant pizza and a poster with the recipe as vague as: “Three eggs, some honey, some flour, some milk and some butter” because we’re teaching countable vs. uncountable nouns and the children don’t yet know things like “spoon” and “stick” and “cup” and “bowl” so the recipe’s got to be simple like so. Funny thing is, the children don’t even really know what butter is and the book is hell-bent on them learning recipes even though they can’t discuss a legitimate recipe in English once they get beyond the word. I tell you, I know nothing about teaching English to children except that I’ve been doing it for a couple of months now and this guy Derek Strange, writer of the CHATTERBOX series, needs a major face lift (Pardon, his series needs the face lift, I don’t presume to know whether he’s attractive or not). I’ve got to teach that butter comes in a tin and that flour and sugar come in packets, never mind butter comes in a box here and flour and sugar come in paper or plastic bags. And I’ve already made a birthday cake for my 1st graders because I’m teaching the sentence, “How old are you?” tomorrow and want to teach as much without translating for them. By the way, all this food is of the cardboard variety. It makes for much fun when the children are practicing, “Can I have a piece of pizza” if I can actually hand them a “slice” of pizza, or when I say that Mickey the Monkey is 7, the children can stick 7 cardboard candles on the cardboard cake. I’ve bought a ton of clear packing tape and use it as lamination so that we can use these teaching tools over and over. Today, I had a great class with my 1st graders, teaching them numbers and how to read them out of sequence. Christy and I think the children worked very hard over the weekend because almost all of them could spell all the numbers and didn’t have to think when I pointed to the words or the numbers and asked for the English name. So, my days are filled with discussions with my co-teachers about how to make a lesson more interesting and my nights are filled with drawing and making teaching aides. Life is good. I’m so tired, though! I’ll try hard to get some bits written and posted tonight, too!
