Summer school is the best time of year to teach. The students are there because they want to be, or at least, their parents want them to be. There is no pressure of tests or quizes or grades or attendance or official marks. Perhaps counterintuitively, that means that most of the real learning that happens at our university, takes place during summer school. Teachers aren't forced to teach a curriculum that is beyond the level or interests of the students, and students forget to worry about what is generally considered evidence of learning and get down to the actual learning instead.
This isn't to say that the student's weren't still concerned with being the best. The first week of summer school, the question I got most often was; "Teacher, what level is this? Are we the highest level?" Which, was a really hard question to answer given that almost everyone in the class was at very different levels from each other, and then were switched. So my frustrating, but very honest answer to them was always "I don't know." Call it teacherly pride, but by the end of our short three weeks together, I was convinced that all of my students were the best.
Since we only had 3 weeks, I let the students choose the topics they wanted to focus on they chose food, fun, and milestones. The first week, we talked about food and memories and favorite recipes and I had them all write out a recipe, and then a paragraph or story, depending on their level about why that food was important to them. It's something I have done before with adult learners, and every time, I get surprising, and often moving results. This time was no exception. The girls wrote about everything from family members, to declaring independence, to possible futures in other countries, and attachments to their own traditions. I was really pleased that so many of them turned in the assignment, knowing there would be no consequences for not doing it, but I was even more pleased with how many of them decided to do the extra credit and actually make their recipe. It was wonderful. You can check out the recipe book and stories for yourself by following this link.
The same week we did our recipes, the younger girls in another class did presentations on different countries. Each group of 3-5 girls was responsible for a "booth" at the culture fair during the break between classes. They had to tell us about the country they researched including food, population, government, tourist sites, traditional clothing a weather. Even though most of the girls read word for word something they printed from Wikipedia when you asked them to tell you about their country, it was still a lot of fun. Some of them even had music for each country and gave mini dancing lessons. My favorite booth was the USA stand. I was interested to hear their opinions of our country, but unfortunately got mostly facts retrieved from Google. They told me about the president, and that I should visit the Grand Canyon and New York City, and Deer Park Michigan (because it has the largest population of Saudis living together in the US) and that we really liked apple pie and hot dogs. The girls covering India were showing people how to wrap saris which was shocking because they would unwrap themselves to do it. That is the most skin I have seen exposed on any Saudi woman since coming here, and even though it was just arms and a midriff, it felt scandalous. The UK table was giving away "Keep Calm and Speak British English" bookmarks, and the Egyptian booth had little pyramids with information on them, very cute. My favorite was the Lebanese booth because they had an array of delicious Lebanese food to try.
The following week our theme was "fun" which I was particularly excited about. I was interested to know what my Saudi students did for fun, and how they spent their time given the limited options available to them. I decided that our project for the week would be developing a website full of fun activities to do in Saudi Arabia. On the first day, we started by brainstorming. All the girls shouted out "shopping" and "going to malls" and I wrote that on the board. Then I turned around to wait for more suggestions and for one incredibly long minute, none came. I started to think that maybe the girls chose the topic of fun because they just never had any, and I was beginning to worry that we would have to scrap the whole project if going to malls was really the only form of entertainment, but then someone shouted out, "Go to Bahrain!" and slowly, the girls started to come up with more ideas. They talked about going to Bahrain to watch movies, or eat in fancy restaurants. I encouraged them to try to think about things they could do in Saudi, and the room was silent again. Eventually, they mentioned trips to Mecca, visiting famous mosques, private parties for women in their homes, listening to music and watching TV, and a few museums and local tourist sites. Finally, we had enough categories of fun to break off into small groups and start writing about what there was to do.
By the middle of the week, the girls were ready to type up the paragraphs and add them to the computers. I tested the website first, and I made sure that multiple people could edit at once, and that you could access the website from the University (they block everything, even yahoo and gmail, but strangely, not facebook?!) before I booked the lab. So I wasn't anticipating any problems until the girls sat down and started having problems immediately. It hadn't occurred to me that as summer school students, they weren't given usernames or passwords, so none of them could log in. I spent a frantic 5 minutes rushing around logging in as me to one computer after another. But even this didn't work out. While the students could now access the computer, no one could log on to the internet since IT had set it up to prevent multiple internet log ins with one ID. I gave up and had everyone type them in word and then, because all email providers are blocked by the University, I saved them all to my flashdrive and promised to email the students their saved work once I got home, so they could edit the website on their own from home.
Technology was only the beginning of our problems. Once the students were able to access the website from home and make changes... things went rather well. I asked them to include at least one picture, one link, and one paragraph of information about their topic. Again, most of them completed the assignment even though it was voluntary, and by Thursday, the website was looking pretty good, minus a few mistakes with the English. But before making the website live, I wanted to make sure I could get approval for the website from the University Administration. They had given me the initial green light, but I think they only did that because they figured there was no way the students would actually manage to do the project. When I presented them with the final version of the website, there was a good amount of surprise. Most of the pages were approved without incident, but when they reached the movies and music tab, they wanted me to delete it. After all, listening to music in public is illegal, and movie theaters don't exist in Saudi. Therefor, they shouldn't exist in any official capacity as far as the University is concerned. I argued that the girls had worked so hard to write about the music and the movies, and that it wouldn't be fair to let the other girls work stay on the webpage while theirs got deleted, and after a lot of negotiation, I got them to agree to letting me delete the links to the racier music and videos, but leave all of the information there. Here is a hint, if you really want to see the videos / listen to the music they recommend, just do a google search for the artists they mention. In the end, we managed to have a half-way decent website of things to do for fun in Saudi. There isn't much to it, for obvious reasons (lack of content + lack of English), but I encourage you to take a look at what my students came up with by clicking here.
The final week, I was planning on having them record themselves reading a personal essay in the style of "This I believe". This would have been a hard final project anyway, but when I learned we would only have class 4 days instead of 5 the final week, and when I realized the last day would be a party, so it really was only 3 days, I decided to give them a break and not give them a project in the final week. Which was fortunate because on the second day they told us we would have only one more day of classes. So the week ended on Tuesday instead of Thursday, and so Tuesday became our party day, and so in the end, it was really only a 2 day week. So, I guess it turned out to be a really good thing that I didn't try to have them do a final project. So the four week summer school ended up being a three week adventure in chaos. But it was worth it. It was nice to be working for once, and I really felt like I learned a lot about my students in a really short time. I can only hope that they can say the same about learning English from me.
Showing posts with label summer school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summer school. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The Great Student Swap
The first few days of summer school went pretty well. I had just about gotten all of my students names down, and I had figured out about where most of them were in terms of levels. We were given books, but with only three weeks left, I knew we wouldn't be able to cover the whole book, so I asked them to vote on which three units they wanted to cover and decided we would do one unit a week. They chose the units on food, fun, and milestones. I was a little surprised at their choices, but figured I had the weekend to plan, so no problem.
On Sunday, I introduced our first project, a recipe and story about why it was special to you. We spent the first day reading sample stories and choosing a dish. They all seemed really excited about putting together a recipe book. I was excited too! I'm getting pretty sick of spaghetti and Raman noodles, which is pretty much all I know how to cook. I would finally have some new recipes to try out.
Also on Sunday, we got to discussing how our classes were all pretty mixed in ability level. I suggested it was because the test was only for reading and vocab, completely leaving out listening, speaking and writing, so of course it was hard to judge the level. Sue suggested that we all write down what we thought the levels of our students were now, after three or four days of teaching. She said we should put them in three groups, beginner, intermediate and advanced. I said I didn't think it made much sense to switch the students now that we were already a week into our four week summer school. She said we weren't necessarily changing the classes, just seeing how the levels were.
So I divided my class based on comparative ability level. The most advanced girls in my room, the middle of the road girls, and then the ones who were lower as beginners. Everyone else also did the same, using the other students in their class as the yardstick for comparing levels rather than one empirical standard. Sue then presented this great variety in class levels as evidence that we needed to re-organize the classes to better reflect the ability levels. Although I knew that Sue wanted to switch the classes up, I didn't know she had gone to Chris, and I didn't know that the official decision had been made to remix summer school.
So there we were, two days before our project was due, working in groups on peer editing when Sue walks in with my class list. She tells me we are changing classes. Instead of looking at what level I already had written on the list next to each girls name, she starts saying each name in turn and asks me to say out loud what level the girl is. I was so embarrassed for the students. I hadn't even warned them that this might happen since I didn't know it had been officially decided. So now, not only were they being told they were switching their classes, I was publicly announcing their level in front of the whole class. The advanced girls were taken to one room, and the beginners another, and I was left with the intermediates. Suddenly my class of 19 was down to about 8. After everyone left, we all just kind of looked at each other with deer in the headlights expressions. What had just happened?
We recovered a little and re-assigned groups and did what we could, but since new students were trickling in the entire rest of the class, it was hard to accomplish anything much. It was all I could do to get down the new student's names. I was so relieved when the class finally ended. My relief didn't last long though, a bunch of my students who had been switched rushed back to my class during the break and begged to be let back in the class. I wanted my class back as much as they wanted to come back to it, but I figured I had better not stir up any trouble. After all, there was only two and a half weeks left at this point. I told the girls they could ask Chris if they wanted to switch back, but that I couldn't say yes or no, I didn't have the power.
I'm not sure if they ever did check with Chris about switching classes. I do know that from that day on, my attendance roster was never the same from one day to the next. Some of my old students did come back. I decided I wouldn't press the issue and ask them if they had gotten permission or not. Other students drifted in and out again, coming to my class some days, another class other days. Some girls left for holidays in Turkey or Egypt and stopped attending all together. Other girls showed up so late every day they might as well have been absent. All in all, I had over 40 students, but probably never more than 20 at any one time. And the level problem? Well, turns out is was twice as bad now than it had been before.
It went like this. Each person divided her class into three groups; beginner, intermediate, advanced. They did so based on the comparison of all the students in their class. So in my class, which apparently had been a "high" level class to begin with, the beginners were the girls who maybe knew most of the vocabulary, but weren't successful at using the grammar yet to form more or less coherent sentences. But in another teacher's with an overall lower level, the beginners were those who were still learning, "hello, my name is..." While her advanced students were just mastering the present tense, my advanced students were using subjunctive clauses and transitional phrases. However, when we switched it up, my beginners were sent to the same class as her beginners, and my advanced to the same class as my advanced. As you can imagine, this had somewhat of the opposite effect of it's intended purpose.
From the beginning we didn't know much about the summer school. We didn't know who was coming or when, and we also never found out why. I'm still not sure what the program was designed to do, or what they wanted the students to accomplish in those three and a half weeks. I'm pretty sure many of the students themselves didn't know why they were there. But I do think (hope) they got something out of it. I know I did. At the very least, I now know about 40 Arabic girls names. Anyone need any baby naming advice?
On Sunday, I introduced our first project, a recipe and story about why it was special to you. We spent the first day reading sample stories and choosing a dish. They all seemed really excited about putting together a recipe book. I was excited too! I'm getting pretty sick of spaghetti and Raman noodles, which is pretty much all I know how to cook. I would finally have some new recipes to try out.
Also on Sunday, we got to discussing how our classes were all pretty mixed in ability level. I suggested it was because the test was only for reading and vocab, completely leaving out listening, speaking and writing, so of course it was hard to judge the level. Sue suggested that we all write down what we thought the levels of our students were now, after three or four days of teaching. She said we should put them in three groups, beginner, intermediate and advanced. I said I didn't think it made much sense to switch the students now that we were already a week into our four week summer school. She said we weren't necessarily changing the classes, just seeing how the levels were.
So I divided my class based on comparative ability level. The most advanced girls in my room, the middle of the road girls, and then the ones who were lower as beginners. Everyone else also did the same, using the other students in their class as the yardstick for comparing levels rather than one empirical standard. Sue then presented this great variety in class levels as evidence that we needed to re-organize the classes to better reflect the ability levels. Although I knew that Sue wanted to switch the classes up, I didn't know she had gone to Chris, and I didn't know that the official decision had been made to remix summer school.
So there we were, two days before our project was due, working in groups on peer editing when Sue walks in with my class list. She tells me we are changing classes. Instead of looking at what level I already had written on the list next to each girls name, she starts saying each name in turn and asks me to say out loud what level the girl is. I was so embarrassed for the students. I hadn't even warned them that this might happen since I didn't know it had been officially decided. So now, not only were they being told they were switching their classes, I was publicly announcing their level in front of the whole class. The advanced girls were taken to one room, and the beginners another, and I was left with the intermediates. Suddenly my class of 19 was down to about 8. After everyone left, we all just kind of looked at each other with deer in the headlights expressions. What had just happened?
We recovered a little and re-assigned groups and did what we could, but since new students were trickling in the entire rest of the class, it was hard to accomplish anything much. It was all I could do to get down the new student's names. I was so relieved when the class finally ended. My relief didn't last long though, a bunch of my students who had been switched rushed back to my class during the break and begged to be let back in the class. I wanted my class back as much as they wanted to come back to it, but I figured I had better not stir up any trouble. After all, there was only two and a half weeks left at this point. I told the girls they could ask Chris if they wanted to switch back, but that I couldn't say yes or no, I didn't have the power.
I'm not sure if they ever did check with Chris about switching classes. I do know that from that day on, my attendance roster was never the same from one day to the next. Some of my old students did come back. I decided I wouldn't press the issue and ask them if they had gotten permission or not. Other students drifted in and out again, coming to my class some days, another class other days. Some girls left for holidays in Turkey or Egypt and stopped attending all together. Other girls showed up so late every day they might as well have been absent. All in all, I had over 40 students, but probably never more than 20 at any one time. And the level problem? Well, turns out is was twice as bad now than it had been before.
It went like this. Each person divided her class into three groups; beginner, intermediate, advanced. They did so based on the comparison of all the students in their class. So in my class, which apparently had been a "high" level class to begin with, the beginners were the girls who maybe knew most of the vocabulary, but weren't successful at using the grammar yet to form more or less coherent sentences. But in another teacher's with an overall lower level, the beginners were those who were still learning, "hello, my name is..." While her advanced students were just mastering the present tense, my advanced students were using subjunctive clauses and transitional phrases. However, when we switched it up, my beginners were sent to the same class as her beginners, and my advanced to the same class as my advanced. As you can imagine, this had somewhat of the opposite effect of it's intended purpose.
From the beginning we didn't know much about the summer school. We didn't know who was coming or when, and we also never found out why. I'm still not sure what the program was designed to do, or what they wanted the students to accomplish in those three and a half weeks. I'm pretty sure many of the students themselves didn't know why they were there. But I do think (hope) they got something out of it. I know I did. At the very least, I now know about 40 Arabic girls names. Anyone need any baby naming advice?
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Summer School
We were told from the beginning that after school ended, we would have to teach summer school. No one knew exactly when it would start, or who we would be teaching, or what they would be learning. No one knew anything aside from the fact that last year, only about 7 students showed up for summer school, and there were over 20 teachers to teach them. By all accounts, summer school was easy, and practically non-existent. I was not going to complain. So far, I was being paid an awful lot of money to do awfully little work.
In typical Saudi fashion, information reached us by way of rumors, most of them self-generated out of boredom. We invented worse case scenarios, best case scenarios, and scenarios that would be absurd anywhere else, but that were remarkably typical for here. The truth about summer school will no doubt be some combination of all three. The only thing we know for sure is that we won't know anything until the last possible moment. Here is the first official email we had about Summer School (It's good to keep in mind that our weekend is Friday & Saturday instead of Saturday & Sunday):
In typical Saudi fashion, information reached us by way of rumors, most of them self-generated out of boredom. We invented worse case scenarios, best case scenarios, and scenarios that would be absurd anywhere else, but that were remarkably typical for here. The truth about summer school will no doubt be some combination of all three. The only thing we know for sure is that we won't know anything until the last possible moment. Here is the first official email we had about Summer School (It's good to keep in mind that our weekend is Friday & Saturday instead of Saturday & Sunday):
"Right now, on Thursday afternoon, we don’t have any specific plans or assignments for the summer sessions. But rumors are flying around. We may have to teach kids and/or adults. We don’t have any
specific information on ages or numbers of students, curriculum,
objectives, goals, books, timing, or duration of classes other
interesting information. But it looks like We may have some students
on Monday. We may be doing placement
tests or we may be starting
classes."
So, basically, we didn't really know anything at all, and probably wouldn't know anything until the day we were going to start teaching
On Sunday, our first day back after the weekend, we had to proctor exams. I initially thought we were proctoring the make-up tests for students who didn't show up for their final exams, but we were actually proctoring placement tests for summer school. This placement test consisted of 25 multiple choice questions. These questions ranged in complexity from easy, to mildly challenging, with some confusing and strange thrown in. None of the questions really tested anything more than basic vocabulary, so they weren't really going to help us understand much of anything about our students levels.
Sample question:
On Sunday, our first day back after the weekend, we had to proctor exams. I initially thought we were proctoring the make-up tests for students who didn't show up for their final exams, but we were actually proctoring placement tests for summer school. This placement test consisted of 25 multiple choice questions. These questions ranged in complexity from easy, to mildly challenging, with some confusing and strange thrown in. None of the questions really tested anything more than basic vocabulary, so they weren't really going to help us understand much of anything about our students levels.
Sample question:
Soda comes in a
a: jar
b: can
c: box
d. bag
About an hour before we left for the day on Sunday, Chris, or boss, held a meeting with the selected few who would teach summer school. As you might imagine, this placement test didn't tell us a whole lot, other than that some of the students could read English and some of them could not. We graded the tests, and found that most students either did extremely well, or extremely poor. There wasn't much in between. We also had a range of ages from 7 to 32. What she had decided to do was split the groups up more or less by age, and then ability level. We would be teaching with a partner, one of us taking the first teaching session of an hour and 15 minutes, and the other taking the second session of 1 hour and 15 minutes. She announced out teaching partners, and I was happy to be working with Sue, an experienced and energetic Jordanian woman. We had a group of older (20 and up) girls with an intermediate level of English. Sue and I sat down to start planning what we were going to do the first day for ice breakers and such since we had no books and didn't want to end up doing the same activities. We even planned to do a project at the end of each week like an international day or a fashion show. I was excited.
After we talked, I was chatting with my friend Sara who had been assigned to work with a group of 13 to 19 year olds of mixed ability. She was not happy with the co-teacher they had put her with. I knew that she was somewhat new to teaching, and so I was worried that they had given her the most challenging group to work with. Her students were mixed in both age and ability level, which would be hard for any teacher, let alone a new one with a co-teacher she didn't get along with. I suggested that she ask Chris if she could switch with someone. She suggested that she switch with me. I was happy to switch, because for me it didn't matter much, but I told her we should ask the other co-teachers if they minded first. Luckily, neither of them minded. I told Sara to go ask Chris if it was okay to switch, but she asked me to come with her, so I did. Sara is a little timid, so when we got to Chris's office, she didn't say anything but looked at me. I looked back at her. Chris stared at us both. It became clear that when she said "come with me to tell her" she actually meant, "I'll stand next to you while you tell her." So I asked Chris if we could swap. I didn't really want to be the one to ask because I didn't want to seem like I was complaining or being difficult, but I guess I shouldn't have worried because she didn't seem to mind and said it would be fine. So, we switched and I was happy for Sara, but had absolutely no idea what I would do when it was time to teach my mixed group the next day. I spent that evening coming up with a series of activities that even beginners could handle, but that would also give me a better understanding of each person's level. I was looking forward to the class at 9:00am.
When we arrived at work at 8:30am, my new co-teacher told me that I was working with Sue now. I was confused because I thought we had worked it all out the day before. Apparently, Sue had wanted to switch back or something, so I went and asked Sue if we were working together and she said, no she was with Sara now, and I said that is what I thought too, so what was going on? It turned out that Sue actually wanted to work with the younger group of mixed ability girls because she wanted a change from the older girls we teach during the school year. So she wanted to switch classes, but not co-teachers. So much for trying to get Sara out of the harder class, and so much for all of my plans for lower level students. Sue told me she was too busy putting together an activity that would start in a few minutes, and so could I please go tell Chris that we were switching classes. I started to point out that I also needed to go teach in the next 10 minutes, and now had to create a whole new lesson plan before I went, but figured that in the time spent arguing with her about it, I could already have it done. So I went to Chris and explained the new arrangement, and she looked at me with those boss eyes, you know, the eyes that say "I hate that part of my job is trying to placate all the whiney teachers who want everything their way." And I tried to explain that it wasn't me, that I had been happy all along and that I was just the messenger, but she wasn't buying it. I didn't have time to argue, so I left and scrambled off to class.
I needn't have rushed. Classes start at 9, but students didn't start arriving until 9:10. Which was okay because the first day was chaos. None of the students knew who they had been assigned to, or where to go. Even the teachers had no idea. We only received our attendance list and class assignments around 5 minutes before classes started. Imagine 150+ nervous students anxiously awaiting the start of summer school at a real University and 8 teachers wandering the halls like chickens with their heads cut off no one sure where they were supposed to go, or who their students were. We had to walk around the hallways, butchering names in Arabic from our lists and gathering our students. By the time I had rounded up a majority and herded them down the hallway to my assigned class, it was well past 9:20. Imagine my dismay when we discovered another delay. The door to my assigned classroom was locked. So we sent for the key and by the time we finally got everyone in and settled, it was already 9:45, and classes ended at 10:15. With the remaining half-hour, I attempted to learn their names through a name game, which they seemed to like. Probably because they got to watch me struggle with Arabic pronunciation. I was starting to get a better sense of how much English they had, which would definitely make the next day easier. I still don't feel like I know them well, but it was a start.
It felt really good to be teaching with a class of my own again after having been paid to more or less sit around for two months. It was a rocky start with last minute changes and confusion (haven't I learned by now not to expect anything less), but I think it will be pretty smooth sailing for the next four weeks. I'm really looking forward to summer school.
After we talked, I was chatting with my friend Sara who had been assigned to work with a group of 13 to 19 year olds of mixed ability. She was not happy with the co-teacher they had put her with. I knew that she was somewhat new to teaching, and so I was worried that they had given her the most challenging group to work with. Her students were mixed in both age and ability level, which would be hard for any teacher, let alone a new one with a co-teacher she didn't get along with. I suggested that she ask Chris if she could switch with someone. She suggested that she switch with me. I was happy to switch, because for me it didn't matter much, but I told her we should ask the other co-teachers if they minded first. Luckily, neither of them minded. I told Sara to go ask Chris if it was okay to switch, but she asked me to come with her, so I did. Sara is a little timid, so when we got to Chris's office, she didn't say anything but looked at me. I looked back at her. Chris stared at us both. It became clear that when she said "come with me to tell her" she actually meant, "I'll stand next to you while you tell her." So I asked Chris if we could swap. I didn't really want to be the one to ask because I didn't want to seem like I was complaining or being difficult, but I guess I shouldn't have worried because she didn't seem to mind and said it would be fine. So, we switched and I was happy for Sara, but had absolutely no idea what I would do when it was time to teach my mixed group the next day. I spent that evening coming up with a series of activities that even beginners could handle, but that would also give me a better understanding of each person's level. I was looking forward to the class at 9:00am.
When we arrived at work at 8:30am, my new co-teacher told me that I was working with Sue now. I was confused because I thought we had worked it all out the day before. Apparently, Sue had wanted to switch back or something, so I went and asked Sue if we were working together and she said, no she was with Sara now, and I said that is what I thought too, so what was going on? It turned out that Sue actually wanted to work with the younger group of mixed ability girls because she wanted a change from the older girls we teach during the school year. So she wanted to switch classes, but not co-teachers. So much for trying to get Sara out of the harder class, and so much for all of my plans for lower level students. Sue told me she was too busy putting together an activity that would start in a few minutes, and so could I please go tell Chris that we were switching classes. I started to point out that I also needed to go teach in the next 10 minutes, and now had to create a whole new lesson plan before I went, but figured that in the time spent arguing with her about it, I could already have it done. So I went to Chris and explained the new arrangement, and she looked at me with those boss eyes, you know, the eyes that say "I hate that part of my job is trying to placate all the whiney teachers who want everything their way." And I tried to explain that it wasn't me, that I had been happy all along and that I was just the messenger, but she wasn't buying it. I didn't have time to argue, so I left and scrambled off to class.
I needn't have rushed. Classes start at 9, but students didn't start arriving until 9:10. Which was okay because the first day was chaos. None of the students knew who they had been assigned to, or where to go. Even the teachers had no idea. We only received our attendance list and class assignments around 5 minutes before classes started. Imagine 150+ nervous students anxiously awaiting the start of summer school at a real University and 8 teachers wandering the halls like chickens with their heads cut off no one sure where they were supposed to go, or who their students were. We had to walk around the hallways, butchering names in Arabic from our lists and gathering our students. By the time I had rounded up a majority and herded them down the hallway to my assigned class, it was well past 9:20. Imagine my dismay when we discovered another delay. The door to my assigned classroom was locked. So we sent for the key and by the time we finally got everyone in and settled, it was already 9:45, and classes ended at 10:15. With the remaining half-hour, I attempted to learn their names through a name game, which they seemed to like. Probably because they got to watch me struggle with Arabic pronunciation. I was starting to get a better sense of how much English they had, which would definitely make the next day easier. I still don't feel like I know them well, but it was a start.
It felt really good to be teaching with a class of my own again after having been paid to more or less sit around for two months. It was a rocky start with last minute changes and confusion (haven't I learned by now not to expect anything less), but I think it will be pretty smooth sailing for the next four weeks. I'm really looking forward to summer school.
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