so far so good

So I’m into my first week of teaching and so far it’s pretty fun. I am teaching 4 classes of “upper intermediate” students, and one four hour class of “advanced.” The classes that are the most fun are those comprised completely of younger students, which is really only one of them; 5 students, all between 15 and 20. With them I can have a little fun and they’re more forgiving. There is another class, 15 students all of whom are older business types, that is a bit serious and a little demanding. I’m the youngest person in the classroom. On the first day one of the students decided that she disagreed with some sentence structure or another (it had something to do with using “was” instead of “is”). Because she was flat wrong and arguing about it would have detracted from the focus of the lesson, I was sort of short with her about why I was right and she was wrong. When I got home it dawned on me why she believed what she did, so today I made a short point about her confusion – detailing to her and the class … well, you get the drift.

When I get home and start chatting with my roommates, I have to force myself to stop annunciating and avoiding slang in my speech. I use a lot of four letter words just to shake the trend. For the first hour or so after work I tend to sound like some sort of automated over-the-phone menu system.

I haven’t held my “advanced” class yet. It’s only one day a week, but as I said, four hours long. There’s another teacher who has the same level 5 days a week. I think I’ll enjoy this level the most because the first few lesson plans involve argumentation. Shit, finally a practical application of some good ol’ fashioned philosophy.

I wonder what my students thought of me when for a moment I thought that the English alphabet has 26 letters and that “satellite” is spelled with one L. Ah well, I corrected myself later and there were only 2 students there.. one of them probably didn’t know what the fuck I was saying anyway.