First day of school... I was pretty nervous starting the day. We got picked up by a bus from our apartments in the morning and went to the school. We had a few minutes to prep for our classes. Afterwards I had to lead opening with my kids. During opening we are supposed to go through a weather chart and a calendar explaining those things to them. But since I have my own classroom with 12 kids I have to do opening by myself. For the first two weeks my head teacher just wants me to sing songs with them.... so I sing in front of 12 children while they give me a confused look. Afterwards the kids go to the bathroom, wash their hands, and get a drink of water. Then they eat breakfast in their classroom with the Chinese teachers while I eat breakfast in the cafeteria with the other American teachers. After breakfast I go back to my homeroom class and I am supposed to teach them my lesson, but we ran out of time for me to give my lesson because I had to give them names. I named all the kids who didn't have an American name. Some of the names I picked the Chinese teachers thought they were too hard to say (example: Tanner). I also accidentally named a girl with a boy name, so they made me change that... And then to make things better one of the parents requested that their child have a name with a "x" in it. The only thing that came to mind was "Exodus", but I knew if the teachers couldn't say Tanner, Exodus was going to be a stretch. He ended up getting named Harry. After they go through the same process again of going to the bathroom, washing their hands and getting a drink of water. Then they went outside for an activity. After we brought them back into the classroom and changed them into different clothes. I don't know if I mentioned this but IT'S SO HUMID HERE, so that's why we change them. Once again they go to the bathroom, wash their hands and get a drink. Next they have a snack. During this whole time there are 2 or 3 Chinese teachers instructing them, but I tell them what to do in English after the Chinese teachers finish talking. In the chaos of everything I turned my back on two kids playing and next thing I notice was one kid biting the other on the shoulder. Poor kid had an intense bruise! After snack time I went to the Pre-K classroom while Anna rotated to my homeroom class. It was so hard teaching the little 2 year old's, because they don't pay attention. After teaching/ watching the pre-k for about 40 minutes I went back to my home room for playtime. Then as they started lunch I was finished for the day and went back to the cafeteria to eat lunch. My school has the yummiest food! The bus picked us up again and drove us back to the apartments.
After school we met up with the boys from the Kaiyan school and went downtown to explore. We tried stuff at the bakery and tried smoothies from a store called A-OK! The Kiwi smoothie is the most amazing smoothie I have ever tasted. After exploring for a few hours we went and ate at a yummy restaurant! It was a long day, but it was fun!
It's so pretty here. I never knew it was so jungle-like and green in China!
All the girls teaching at my group!
No comments:
Post a Comment