December 3, 2004
Teaching Schedule
It’s been a busy week in Changsha! My first week of teaching my own classes. I worked on getting my classroom set up and taking down a lot of work which covered every inch of the walls. Now we have some space for new work. I am lucky to have been assigned a decent size room which is on an outside wall and has windows across the back. It’s brighter and sunnier than some and I’ll be able to let in some fresh (?is there any?) air. What it will be like in the summer temperatures of 30-40 C. remains to be seen. There is no air conditioning in the school……..nor heat for that matter – except in the teacher’s prep room. Hmm….can I teach all my classes in there? I don’t think so.

Here’s my schedule for those of you who are wondering.
Monday 7-9 pm Adult’s Level 4 8-10 Students depending on how many show up. (Means they have progressed through levels 1,3,3 so they have a good understanding of the English language but have a long way to go.) They want to speak more so we had an interesting debate the other night about equality between men and women!
Tuesday 7-8 pm Starter Class 13 children from 4-6 with a small vocabulary of English words. We are working on words for different toys (teddy bear, doll, boat, plane etc.) emotions learning the song: “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.”
Wednesday 7-9 pm Same class from Monday night. They are enrolled for 8 weeks, twice a week.
Thursday & Friday are my days off! Yippee!
My weekend classes consist of 3 each day. Hours are from 9 am - 5:30 pm. I have 5 weeks left with each of these as I have taken them over from a teacher who left a few weeks ago.
Saturday: 9-11:15 High Flyer class of 16 (6-10 yr.) Level 2
1:30 – 3:45 pm High Flyer class class of 13 (6-10 yr.) Level 2
4:15 – 5:30 pm Starter Class (4-6 Yr.)
Sunday: 9-11:15 High Flyer class Level 1
1:30 – 3:45 TrailBlazers (11-16 Yr.) Level 2
4:15 – 5:30 Starter Class (4-6 Yr.)

So you can see that I have to prepare a lot of lessons for the weekend classes. It means writing out the lesson plan (grammar to be learned, vocabulary, games, songs etc.) And every class gets homework! I have to hand in a sheet stating what is taught in each class and what the homework is before the class. The secretaries translate it into Chinese for the parents and each child is given one to take home at the end of the class.

This will be my schedule until January. Then winter intensive starts. Regular schools close down for the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year’s) so parents send their children to our English school at that time. We will teach full days Monday to Thursday and have 3 days off.

We are expected to put in a certain amount of hours at the school on the days we only teach in the evening. That’s no problem! We gather there and prepare our lessons so our home time is free time. I’m not completely in the groove yet and have had to bring work home and also prepare weekend classes on my days off. Hopefully it will gradually become easier as I gain confidence. Right now it seems I plan for the full 2 hours and by the second break I’ve covered everything and scramble to find fillers. I am sure this will work itself out too.

I came to EF (English First School) at the right time. It’s slow right now and the perfect time to get my feet wet before the winter intensive. After that it’s slows down again until June and goes crazy for June, July and August when I assume the children are out of their regular schools again.

I will get to meet my weekend students in the next two days and will report back! I’ve already been warned about a few of them………..the troublemakers!

My next entry will be about the city and people of Changsha…………just waiting for a nice sunny day to take some good pictures. What else would you like to know? I’m open to suggestions!