Now I know how doctors, businessmen, Ozzy Osbourne and pizza delivery guys feel. Having a stressful job can really take it out of you by the end of the week. Teaching English really beats you up sometimes. They say Presidents typically age about 10 years in one term, well English teachers usually age about 367 days in a typical year, 368 in a leap year. Laugh now, but after 170 years of teaching it will feel like I have taught 171. That´s no laughing matter. The stress of the job can get to you sometimes. Take last week for example.

Even with all my work related stress I was able to find the time to make it out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. In between then, I actually taught an hour and a half class where all we did was play 20 questions and Scattegories. Yes, it was as tough as it sounds.

Wait, hold on a second. Boston´s "More than a Feeling" is on right now in the internet cafe and it is my favorite part. Ok, it´s over now. But, I digress, back to the point.

I had a lesson prepared, grammar and all, but one of the students came in and asked if we could play a game. My response, "OF COURSE. Think of a famous person...ok, got one yet? Good. Miguel, you ask Eva yes/no questions about this person and based on Eva´s answers you must decide who it is."

45 minutes later it was Scattegories time. I created a half assed board with crooked lines on it and photocopied it. The topics were like "things from your kitchen, animals, movies, etc...". Then, I would randomly pick a letter at random (we had no dice). Umm, "K", GO!

Last but not least is an old standby, Hangman. If it wasn´t for the creators of Hangman, I don´t know what I would do with all the hours of kids classes I have each week. It´s the only damn thing they will sit still and shut up for. Except for this little kid named Carlos. Usually by the time we get to Hangman, I have already kicked him out of class and he is sitting out by the Director´s office. We had a test like two weeks ago. When Carlos took his test ago, he just filled in letters. Most of the test was vocabulary and they had to fill in the missing letters (pineapple turned into pkgnuoprle). His made no sense, most of the time the only letters he had right were the ones that I had put on the test to give them clues. 2 out of 15 correct. Talk about having a shitty teacher, I told him that if he keeps getting grades like that in English class the only job he will be able to get is President of the United States. He just better be ready to kill innocent people and judging on his behavior and attitude that might not be a problem.