I am now an official teacher. Now I have to get jobs and make money and support myself. We had several big papers due Friday along with a portfolio of all the other work we've been doing throughout the course. It took me a while on the papers but I was mostly done Thursday and all I needed was to print some things out Friday. Some of my classmates were rushing to get things done Friday. It felt good to be relaxed.
I had my first student on Thursday morning at 8 am. I got a phone call Wednesday afternoon to come in for a first time student. They emailed me some info and said to get there around 7:30 and they would give me some details about what I needed to do. They emailed me some things Wednesday night which said to mainly talk and gauge his level. I got there at 7:15 and waited until 8 and no one from the school was there. The student got there before someone from the school. We introduced ourselves while we're waiting for the school to open up.
I get in there and I told him we'd just talk to gauge his fluency. The girl sets his book and my teachers book in front of me along with a CD player. Since she did this I was wondering if I needed to try to do something with the book but didn't want to flip the pages in front of the student. He was very nice and spoke English pretty good but just needed some practice. He had just been promoted and would be traveling and doing presentations in English.
I felt like he was thinking that just talking with no structure was a waste of time but he was nice. It was tough for me to talk to him for an hour. I kept checking my watch very subtly and it was going soooo slow. He told the girl at the school that he wanted to come every day so she scheduled him for the next day and I assumed that I would be the one who needed to be there. The girl at the school spoke little English and she said a guy at the school who spoke English would call me that afternoon.
He never did and so I went by the school because I was close. He said the student asked for different teachers because he wanted to hear different dialects. I guess that was my last class with the guy, who knows. He also said he left me instructions of what I need to do in the teachers packet. I explained that I got it while sitting in front of the student and he said that just talking was the right thing to do. I guess if I hadn't gone by that no one would have told me not to come by the next morning. Oh well, every day is a new adventure at this point.
God did bless me with a private student. A guy came by the school Thursday who was a student there before and was leaving Brazil to take care of his Mom. He had some students that he wanted to give to someone else. One of our teachers told him about me and Tom. I got a teenage kid who just needs help with homework twice a week for two hours each. I met with him Friday and it was pretty simple. The most time consuming part was literature. He is having to read To Kill A Mockingbird and answer questions on it. He has homework due in a little over a week so I borrowed his book and read it this weekend. It was okay, not sure why its considered such a classic. That's just me.
I also helped my school with a student from Sao Paulo who is doing an immersion course for a few days for her work. I met with her for four hours Saturday and will do four hours with her tomorrow and five hours Wednesday. Other teachers will be doing the other times with her. She was very nice and I enjoyed it because we used a book and it had structure. I like to have structure at this point. I'm not real comfortable with winging since I'm an official teacher as of 2 days ago.
Tomorrow is a busy day with a follow up orientation from a school and we have to give a 5 minute presentation of a subject he gave us last week. We just have to basically tell how we would teach it. Then I have the student at the school until 5 pm and then I have a student from 6-7:30. The last teacher with him didn't write down where they finished so I'm not sure what I'll be teaching. I'll have to ask him where they finished and go from there.
I'm learning that flexibility is a much needed quality.
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