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Entry tags:
Anxious
I'm ready to be done with this week. There's so much to do before Saturday, but I still want time to go quickly. I'm going out of my mind with anxiousness. I don't want to sit at school all day. I have to teach this week, but it's the dickhead kids. I sat without classes for almost a month, and then the two weeks before I leave, the two weeks when I'd really much rather be not teaching, I have the dickhead kids.
At first I thought it was all in my head that these kids were little bastards, but now that I look back at my notes I realized over half of my second year classes were sassy and some of them were just downright rude. I'm beginning to worry that my lesson plan won't be fun enough to keep them engaged. Granted, last time my lesson fell completely apart, so I think part of me is still wounded from that, but I'm still not convinced it's entirely my fault. How can 2nd year students be dumber than 1st year students? It doesn't make any sense. Also, both of the two 2nd year teachers are really bad at classroom management. To put the icing on the cake, the one who is AWFUL at classroom management is even worse at English. I hate talking to him because not only is he awkward as hell and impossible to understand, but he won't talk to me in Japanese either. This creates a very effective loop of avoidance. Initially I tried to break through it by being proactive and friendly, but it's proving to be too much work.
Then yesterday I waited around all day for a time when both teachers were free to talk about lesson plans, and finally the less-awkward teacher approached me by himself to talk about the lesson. Afterward, he called over the other teacher who claimed to be busy for the rest of the day. If you knew you were going to be busy, why didn't you come to me earlier? Especially because me and the super awkward teacher were supposed to teach 1st period this morning. We ended up moving the lesson to Friday, which is fine because that class is one of the classes I hate the most and I'd prefer to have the kinks out of the lesson before I teach them, but the voice at the back at my head keeps saying, "Way to go, Steph, you made it so inconvenient they had to reschedule the class." But then I remind myself that it's not really my fault. I hate working in an environment that's all men, and I hate working in a place full of awkward people who are mostly too shy or too afraid to talk to me.
As far as the class goes, I'm not sure what I can do to remedy the problem when the teachers are part of it.
I tried to come into this week by engaging the students with fun physical activities. I'm letting them have a snowball fight in class (and I set it up in such a way that bullying and low self esteem can't happen for people who lose too much). They'll face off with vocabularly questions, winners get to throw their snowballs, and then move to the next pair. That way everyone is moving and you won't notice too much if the same people always lose. Yet still, I'm nervous. I gave them a really easy, really fun, completely un-educational, activity the last time I taught them and not only did they manage to not understand the simple instructions, but they also managed to make it seem boring. These kids must have some kind of magic power for suckage. God, I hate 17 year olds.
Which reminds me, I'll have to go to the bathroom and psyche up my sass in the mirror before every class, since I think that's the only thing they respond to.
I think part of the problem is that they're just not very advanced, and so this week if I go over ever detail and spell everything out for them, they'll be able to participate. It's less than ideal, I want to train these kids to use their heads instead of being translation robots, but I have to start small and gain their confidence first. I had to take this approach with some of my 1st year classes, but now they're more independent. I have only been in the second year classrooms twice, and only once with my own lesson, so there's no reason to believe the same thing won't happen after a little work with them.
I could do without this stress right now. I guess it's really not a big deal considering I'm doing my part, so it's not my fault no matter how things turn out, but I always have the overwhelming desire for things to go well. I can't not set out to fix other people's problems because I'm still responsible for making this class go well.
Wish me luck, 240 seventeen year olds stand between me and Christmas.
At first I thought it was all in my head that these kids were little bastards, but now that I look back at my notes I realized over half of my second year classes were sassy and some of them were just downright rude. I'm beginning to worry that my lesson plan won't be fun enough to keep them engaged. Granted, last time my lesson fell completely apart, so I think part of me is still wounded from that, but I'm still not convinced it's entirely my fault. How can 2nd year students be dumber than 1st year students? It doesn't make any sense. Also, both of the two 2nd year teachers are really bad at classroom management. To put the icing on the cake, the one who is AWFUL at classroom management is even worse at English. I hate talking to him because not only is he awkward as hell and impossible to understand, but he won't talk to me in Japanese either. This creates a very effective loop of avoidance. Initially I tried to break through it by being proactive and friendly, but it's proving to be too much work.
Then yesterday I waited around all day for a time when both teachers were free to talk about lesson plans, and finally the less-awkward teacher approached me by himself to talk about the lesson. Afterward, he called over the other teacher who claimed to be busy for the rest of the day. If you knew you were going to be busy, why didn't you come to me earlier? Especially because me and the super awkward teacher were supposed to teach 1st period this morning. We ended up moving the lesson to Friday, which is fine because that class is one of the classes I hate the most and I'd prefer to have the kinks out of the lesson before I teach them, but the voice at the back at my head keeps saying, "Way to go, Steph, you made it so inconvenient they had to reschedule the class." But then I remind myself that it's not really my fault. I hate working in an environment that's all men, and I hate working in a place full of awkward people who are mostly too shy or too afraid to talk to me.
As far as the class goes, I'm not sure what I can do to remedy the problem when the teachers are part of it.
I tried to come into this week by engaging the students with fun physical activities. I'm letting them have a snowball fight in class (and I set it up in such a way that bullying and low self esteem can't happen for people who lose too much). They'll face off with vocabularly questions, winners get to throw their snowballs, and then move to the next pair. That way everyone is moving and you won't notice too much if the same people always lose. Yet still, I'm nervous. I gave them a really easy, really fun, completely un-educational, activity the last time I taught them and not only did they manage to not understand the simple instructions, but they also managed to make it seem boring. These kids must have some kind of magic power for suckage. God, I hate 17 year olds.
Which reminds me, I'll have to go to the bathroom and psyche up my sass in the mirror before every class, since I think that's the only thing they respond to.
I think part of the problem is that they're just not very advanced, and so this week if I go over ever detail and spell everything out for them, they'll be able to participate. It's less than ideal, I want to train these kids to use their heads instead of being translation robots, but I have to start small and gain their confidence first. I had to take this approach with some of my 1st year classes, but now they're more independent. I have only been in the second year classrooms twice, and only once with my own lesson, so there's no reason to believe the same thing won't happen after a little work with them.
I could do without this stress right now. I guess it's really not a big deal considering I'm doing my part, so it's not my fault no matter how things turn out, but I always have the overwhelming desire for things to go well. I can't not set out to fix other people's problems because I'm still responsible for making this class go well.
Wish me luck, 240 seventeen year olds stand between me and Christmas.