Tempest7: Blogger

Dying at Work

My working situtation has been pushed to the point where I am actually very upset by it. Majority of my friends probably know I really like well built "systems" and my work place isn't. Firstly the place isn't a bad place to work, my situtation came up due to a number of factors including fault on my end, but it is at a point where I need to find something else.

I need to learn to be a better teacher maybe. I feel really stressed when I get a mixed class and I have students of different levels. It has been made clear to me that I need to act in a manner that promotes business and that means making the parents happy. The children need to appear to do the worksheets provided and they need to learn. They also need to have fun, parents can watch us while we teach through a little window in the door. No fault of their own, some parents are really protective and ultra sensitive. The children can not be too silent, and they can not be too happy or else they don't appear to be learning anything. So far I have been accepted as a teacher. My biggest problem is I haven't been modivated in the past to properly prepare. I guess I didn't take the job seriously enough but this usually isn't a problem until we get to the topic of my summer science classes. I helped write two summer science courses one for primary 1-2 and one for primary 3 to 4. During the writing I was under the impression that other people would be purchasing the materials and I would just provide a list. I wasn't particulary keen on buying materials myself especially after trying so hard to find an eye dropper and matches. Those relatively simple items are fairly hard to nearly impossible to find in Hong Kong for someone who's not familar with the environment. Local drug stores? Supermarkets? Nope they didn't have them. Matches we just end up burning paper and we found other things that can serve as eye droppers (including using straws). So far I've been improvising with materials I've found around the classroom. Sometimes this is really difficult for me to teach a particular scientific principle and extremely annoying. I was told to draft up a materials list before the classes started and told that someone would be purchasing them. This never happened, but then out of the blue they assumed I should have been more proactive as a teacher and I should be out buying supplies. The last thing I really want to do in Hong Kong is working on my own free time. I'm sure that's the sign of a really good teacher but my focus actually isn't to become a teacher. My current financial situtation typically keeps me away from going out to buy things as well; I've been living a really poor life and if it wasn't for the assistance of others I would be much worst off. The job of purchasing items for my science class kept getting passed around. I have to admit I've been avoiding the task. It really has come down to a point I can't avoid it anymore. But I hate how things are really unclear. Maybe it is my lack of understanding that is causing the problem but I really feel no modivation.

I was so fed up Ada came out to help me cool off. We went out to eat and chat about things. I was so upset I actually told off one of the guys who stands on the street shoving flyers into your face. Well, not really told off but I did swear at him. After I cooled off and walked home I spent the rest of the night chatting with Nana about various topics, including briefly comparing aspects of Hong Kong to her beloved New York City.

I really need to learn patience maybe. My Weds classes are usually one of my favourites. I was introduced with a slight headache though a young child was introduced into one of my classes. I think in general I enjoy having the older children. They tend to understand more and are easier to predict then younger children. This particular young girl has very good oral skills in English for her age (just under 4 years). Her other skills are under developed and her thinking has matured yet but she's in a class with people maybe nearly twice her age (not quite but you can tell they are older than her). So my well behaved class all of a sudden has a control issue introduced into it. It isn't a problem, just an annoyance. I had Kerry come in for writing again, teaching her writting has turned into a bit of a joy. I don't know why the other people who signed up for the class don't show up but I enjoy individual classes. I like to focus and ensure that a person really is learning and it is easier for me to adjust the content to suit the individual. Kerry is very open with me and inquisitive. We've made it a thing where after classes are done I help her read out of a book titled "Rubbish Jokes". Just one of your standard joke books but a lot of puns and idioms I need to explain. She asked me in class today if I would read the book with her after class which I thought was really cute. Her mother was in a hurry to leave though so I kept it quick, I overheard her asking if she could at least stay a little bit to read the book. I had totally forgotten that I have an individual coversational class with Suki on Weds. This is another one of my joys because she is an older student. I act very casual with her and actually our conversational class has started to focus away from the book material. She's usually very good at doing the book material so I just rush that with her. Recently I have been pushing her to give me instructions to go to places; like her various schools and sporting areas. Not that watching a video on people going to a wedding isn't useful, but I just feel being able to give directions or being able to describe what you do in your free time is more useful. When she does the videos she is mainly concentrating on how to complete the book. She's worked out her own system to complete each part. So out of our 1 hour class I let her watch the video and complete her book for about 10 - 15 minutes.

I went to HKU again today but it was totally different this time. Not that it was a waste per se but the entire class was held in Chinese. I learned a few vocabulary words but I'll probably forget them in no time. The class talked about technology to assist disabled and learning disabled students. The classmates are getting use to me, actually I went there by myself today and managed to fumble my way to find the class. One of the students is interested in starting her own learning centre and wants to contact me about it sometime. We went out for viet food afterwards and then I went home to setup some new things on my computer.

I've been playing with the new, yahoo for free, konfabulator. Those people who are familar with Apple's dashboard probably know about this little tool already. It actually is worth running for me. I have a little widgets that run on my desktop that integrate nicely into my windows environment. A basic picture widget goes through my various pictures and displaces a little version on my screen randomly. I use a few to tell me how strong my wireless signal is, what my battery is at, and how much physical memory I am using. In terms of news items I have on that tells me the weather, another one for select stocks, and a news reader that I load with RSS feeds. I tested the reader with my blog and I had to burn a new feed as RSS version 2.0. Of course I have an blogger atom feed so those using Firefox can do a live bookmark of my blog to see the updates.

posted by Tempest7 @ 11:00