Stories from the classroom, or about the work culture.
“AMY MESSED WITH CHANDLER’S COMPUTER” Jason’s voice was much too loud for the tiny office all of Happy English’s staff were crammed into. My first thought was Jason hates fun. Ten minutes later the situation escalated even more as Jason marched around claiming loudly that AMY had lost Happy English two customers. Let me tell you it was … More Don’t pull pranks on day 2.
I had a party in my Minions class, partly because we were covering the party unit, but mostly as a chance to say goodbye. Nate and I had been getting a collection of gifts throughout the week from our students. The school had informed them that we were going back to Canada to get married, … More Saturday November 08 2014
I spent my office hours writing comprehensible lesson plans for the teachers who would be taking over my classes. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to give them a bit of a head start.
Katrina was standing in front of the door to our centre, all but stamping her feet in frustration, “I get docked pay when I come in late,” she fumed. “How am I supposed to sign in on time when I can’t get in the door?” Katrina is not a morning person. Neither am I for … More November 02 2014
I was so exhausted this morning, but I still had a few more Halloween classes to do. I had fun showing off my Halloween story- ppt version. I had even found out a way to input sound effects! I took my class trick or treating at my colleagues classrooms. The school has let our classes … More Saturday November 01 2014
Happy Halloween! At 11:30 am Nate and I walked down our 5 flights of concrete steps. Nate raised a hand to the guard as we walked out of our building complex, and turned left towards Uni-mart. Katrina, Andy, and Susie were waiting for us, we had agreed to take a cab together. It didn’t take … More Friday October 31 2014
We practiced The Time Warp dance about a million times today. Our entire centre of teachers, American and Chinese, piled into a contingency of cabs to take us West across the city to our sister centre. The big Halloween event will be held on an upper floor of their school. The entire floor is being … More Thursday October 23 2014
I had Starfruit class today, and we are on the kitchen unit. This unit has WAY too many vocabulary words, including “washing machine”, “mop” and “broom”. Maybe a mop and broom could be kept in a corner of the kitchen, but I have never heard of a washing machine in a kitchen! Despite the difficulty … More October 22 2014
After packing for our trip to Beijing Saturday night, we had been late getting to bed. Saturday had been a long day, and Sunday would prove to be even longer. Because of my success in Minions Class decorating our classroom doors, I figured I would repeat the activity with my Pineapple Class today. Recently the … More Oct 19 2014 sunday
Yesterday my class made Halloween ghosts. Today’s group of students walked in to spooky paper spirits hanging from the ceiling. As I walked to the front of the room to start class my students chatted with each other and pointed at the ghosts. “No Chinese!” I reminded them as my partner, Kat stuck each students … More Oct 18 2014 Saturday
"China" Figure it Out 