the things we do for our students...

Yes, I actually wore this in my French classes today. Both of them. Well...in fact....both French classes and the Economics class. Yes, yes, I love the girls, and the only way to get through to them is to get them thinking I'm a little off my rocker.

Teaching has been going well! My first week of teaching is complete, and I survived. The girls are getting louder and chattier every day. They were fine the first few days (of course), but new students keep coming, and with larger classes, there's just more talking. Even today, I had 4 new girls in my Economics class, and right away, the new girls were talking. It's mostly frustrating because I know that if they weren't there, it would be that much quieter. You can tell that they just don't want to be there, whereas the other students at least pretended to be interested! But hopefully, if the lessons are interesting and relevant enough, they'll shut up enough to actually learn something. (Though it seems that my Economics class is becoming more of a Character Education class! Weird...)

My French classes are interesting. Harder. Much harder, because I can't just go and photocopy everything that I need done, the day before. We have to give our photocopy guy 4 business days in advance to get anything done, which means that I need to plan it 4 days in advance...and that never happens. So we tried doing some actions today, and the girls just look at me and say, "Mme., we'll never learn if we can't write it down." So ups and downs. I'm thinking that just a bunch of learning games, writing activities, and oral communication will at least get the ball rolling.

I just want my French classes to be step-by-step learning. But it doesn't work that way, since I just want them to know the AIM (gestures) program, for oral speaking, but also grammar...but I want it to be interesting...but I think the students, themselves, secretly just want to do worksheets the entire time, from the textbook. Are they nuts?

It seems that I've been called to play Euchre upstairs! For a bit, before I crash and burn in my bed.

Tomorrow we're heading to the Crowne Plaza for a day of working out, relaxing by the pool, and just trying not to think about school. We deserve it.