Just Another Manic Monday
Manic depressive is more like it! I never used to dislike Mondays, but man, in this program they're CRAZY! You come in, feeling fairly caught up from the weekend, and *WHAM*... suddenly you have eight million things to do!
As of today, we've swapped teaching groups. Instead of teaching a high level class at 9AM, I'm teaching a low level class at 4:45PM. When I got to school this morning, I got my "materials" together (that's the TEFL term for your worksheets and lesson plan), made photocopies, etc. I then put in a solid hour's work on my Learner Profile, a long and tedious assignment that is an analysis of one student's abilities and weaknesses. During our classes that followed (the ones where we're the students, learning grammar and phonology) it turned out that what I thought was an optional part of the assignment... wasn't. I had to rework my whole assignment! And what's especially frustrating is that the way I had done it was (in my humble opinion) was clearer and WAY MORE CONCISE. *sigh* But it's done now! :) All long and unconcise... ;)
After spending an hour or two reworking the assignment (did I mention I had to rework the whole thing? As in all 8 pages of it?) it was time to teach. For my first time with lower level students, it went really well. There was only one awkward moment where I attempted to explain what it meant to say "we aren't really going anywhere nice" to someone who had no idea what I was getting. Two examples later, we were both confused. Finally, the girl next to her explained it in Czech (not such a good thing in your English immersion classroom...), and we moved on! All in all, I'm feeling much more confident for the next lesson.
You know, there are two things that I've noticed a lot of in Prague, and I thought you'd like to hear about them. A) Making out. B) Dogs. Let me be clear. It is not the dogs that are making out. ;) Rather, there are oodles of couples EVERYWHERE who are wrapped around each other like stripes on a candy cane. It's a bit unnerving, thinking that there's a two headed person kissing themselves on the metro, only to discover that they have managed to fit two people into a teeeeny tiiiiiny metro seat. One of these days, I swear I'm going to see a canoodling couple fall backwards down the escalator in the heat of their excitement!
The dogs are much more enjoyable. Every where you go, everyone has a dog. They're either BIG or small. There is no in between! But they have one thing in common: they're beautifully trained. They are often off leash, and they come when they're called, they don't tend to bark, and I have yet to see one attempt to bite anything except its owner's pastry that's they're holding a little to close to the ground. I have a theory about this. Prague traffic is wretched. I have, in actual fact, had a car's bumper touch my knees while I attempted to cross the street. Therefore, dogs who are not well trained, and run into traffic, die. The stupid non obedient dogs get bred out of the system, because they die in tragic traffic accidents. This leaves only the smart, well-trained dogs to survive and breed. I think Canada should adopt this off-leash policy in order to weed out those wretched dogs who chased me down the street as a child, pedalling madly to get away from its jaws of doom whilst its owner shouted meekly and helplessly "Brutus! Brutus, my little puppywuppy of wuv, stop chasing the nasty girlywirly." Any thoughts?
Well, that about wraps up my day. Enough silliness, that's just the heartburn talking (I ate a whole chocolate bar trying to calm my nerves before teaching... baaaaaaaad idea). I hope someone, somewhere might potentially email me today... I haven't had an email in a while... (except for you mum, you're awesome!)
Love you all,
Elizabeth
PS - the reason why I'm so email desperate is that the 12 people I spend time with here all do the same thing all day, every day. They don't have any news for me. YOU ALL, on the other hand, can tell me about YOUR days... days which don't include: grammar lessons, lesson planning, and a strange man named Mali mocking you mercilessly.... Anyways, email me!
Love,
E.
As of today, we've swapped teaching groups. Instead of teaching a high level class at 9AM, I'm teaching a low level class at 4:45PM. When I got to school this morning, I got my "materials" together (that's the TEFL term for your worksheets and lesson plan), made photocopies, etc. I then put in a solid hour's work on my Learner Profile, a long and tedious assignment that is an analysis of one student's abilities and weaknesses. During our classes that followed (the ones where we're the students, learning grammar and phonology) it turned out that what I thought was an optional part of the assignment... wasn't. I had to rework my whole assignment! And what's especially frustrating is that the way I had done it was (in my humble opinion) was clearer and WAY MORE CONCISE. *sigh* But it's done now! :) All long and unconcise... ;)
After spending an hour or two reworking the assignment (did I mention I had to rework the whole thing? As in all 8 pages of it?) it was time to teach. For my first time with lower level students, it went really well. There was only one awkward moment where I attempted to explain what it meant to say "we aren't really going anywhere nice" to someone who had no idea what I was getting. Two examples later, we were both confused. Finally, the girl next to her explained it in Czech (not such a good thing in your English immersion classroom...), and we moved on! All in all, I'm feeling much more confident for the next lesson.
You know, there are two things that I've noticed a lot of in Prague, and I thought you'd like to hear about them. A) Making out. B) Dogs. Let me be clear. It is not the dogs that are making out. ;) Rather, there are oodles of couples EVERYWHERE who are wrapped around each other like stripes on a candy cane. It's a bit unnerving, thinking that there's a two headed person kissing themselves on the metro, only to discover that they have managed to fit two people into a teeeeny tiiiiiny metro seat. One of these days, I swear I'm going to see a canoodling couple fall backwards down the escalator in the heat of their excitement!
The dogs are much more enjoyable. Every where you go, everyone has a dog. They're either BIG or small. There is no in between! But they have one thing in common: they're beautifully trained. They are often off leash, and they come when they're called, they don't tend to bark, and I have yet to see one attempt to bite anything except its owner's pastry that's they're holding a little to close to the ground. I have a theory about this. Prague traffic is wretched. I have, in actual fact, had a car's bumper touch my knees while I attempted to cross the street. Therefore, dogs who are not well trained, and run into traffic, die. The stupid non obedient dogs get bred out of the system, because they die in tragic traffic accidents. This leaves only the smart, well-trained dogs to survive and breed. I think Canada should adopt this off-leash policy in order to weed out those wretched dogs who chased me down the street as a child, pedalling madly to get away from its jaws of doom whilst its owner shouted meekly and helplessly "Brutus! Brutus, my little puppywuppy of wuv, stop chasing the nasty girlywirly." Any thoughts?
Well, that about wraps up my day. Enough silliness, that's just the heartburn talking (I ate a whole chocolate bar trying to calm my nerves before teaching... baaaaaaaad idea). I hope someone, somewhere might potentially email me today... I haven't had an email in a while... (except for you mum, you're awesome!)
Love you all,
Elizabeth
PS - the reason why I'm so email desperate is that the 12 people I spend time with here all do the same thing all day, every day. They don't have any news for me. YOU ALL, on the other hand, can tell me about YOUR days... days which don't include: grammar lessons, lesson planning, and a strange man named Mali mocking you mercilessly.... Anyways, email me!
Love,
E.
posted by Elizabeth @ 21:04
2 Comments:
At 5:53 p.m.,
Karlie said…
Will send e-mail when done frantically knitting socks to be mailed Sept 15 for the sock exchange STOP Promise it will be very entertaining or at least mediocre STOP Miss you STOP
At 8:15 p.m.,
Anonymous said…
You are still a hilarious story teller and I can hear your voice and sound-effects right through your words. Thanks for a good laugh.
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