One Month In...

I have been here over a month now!
Time really flies. I am starting to settle in nicely and it is starting to feel like home.

This week went by pretty quickly but I have to say that I am happy it is over. We did "Class Arrangement" or "Class Placement" testing. I covered the interview (speaking) portion of the testing and was surprised in both good ways and bad. Some of the students who did really well I expected the opposite and those who did poorly I had high hopes for. Overall the speaking level of the students is lower than we would like. This is the same for the writing assessment. This depressed me a little bit and had me questioning my teaching style and looking online at resources for any assistance in improving my teaching ability. I expressed my feelings to my director and she told me not to let it get to me as I have only been there for a month but that she needs to look at how the classes are structured and how to improve her own teaching and the other teachers' as well. We are looking at introducing new books where all skills will be addressed using one central topic. Currently we use many different books with a wide range of topics. This could be what is causing the students to struggle. We will have more meetings to discuss this.

Unfortunately last weekend I was quite ill and stayed in bed for most of it. My roommate was amazing through this and made me rice soup along with pumping tons of vitamin C into my body through clémentines and various drink concoctions. She was like my surrogate mom when I really wanted my mamma haha. On Thursday after the arrangement testing was finished and we had discussed a little about the results and some solutions we went out to dinner and to a norebang (karaoke room) afterwards. This is always fun and my co-teacher Eric and I sant the song "A whole new world" from the movie Aladdin together. It was hilarious. It loosened us up after the week we had.

Today I had planned to go downtown and do some shopping and get some supplies for teaching this week as I want to do some christmas activities with the students. I found out there is a 4-level stationery store downtown that could be very dangerous yet amazing. I am still having problems falling asleep at a decent hour and was up until about 6am and slept until almost 3 so that didn't happen. Tomorrow I will go though and experience that store and downtown in all its glory. Its supposed to be sunny too so that will be a bonus.

Next week we have Wednesday off as people don't go to work on election day which will be nice. Kelly and I are going to take Jenny's kids to the movies. Should be fun!