Tempest7: Blogger

Working Pains

Last time I talked about attending a class and watching a case study on a boy who had a learning disability. Yesterday I fell I have met such a kid. I don't know if it is because I was eating instant noodles the night before but I really didn't that great in the morning. The kids I have during the day are really a bad combination as well, it is just stressful. This particular child, Sherman, I can see him having difficulty reading and spelling words out. He has such a pained look when I ask him to do it and if I leave his side during assignments he seems so distressed. If I pay less attention to him in class he wanders very quickly. I guess I feel stress because I want to help all my students improve but when my class is mixed I feel pretty frustrated about it. I was pressured early in my job to complete worksheets so that parents have concrete proof that their children are performing. I was told by another NET teacher that this tends to be HK's culture. The question is, should I hold the class back to help the slower child, or leave the slower child behind? Some of my children are very bright actually and they are good students. But, sometimes they don't know how to help other children if I ask them to asist me. I really just need to give them more complicated personal assignments but then that feels a bit unfair in the classroom. I could have the slower kids do simplified versions of the assignment and have them skip parts. Then their worksheets a bit incomplete and then I'm not certain if they are actually learning. Sometimes "I just want to die".

However, today it was suppose to be worst. My schedule changes by the hour sometimes so I'm never too certain what I have the next day. I was told that I had 2 additional classes and that in total I would be teaching 7 classes today. 7up is apparently the slang used here for the teachers. One of my students, Grace, who also has a sort of 'problem' was really unresponsive in the morning. She is shy and has difficulty talking. I'm usually happy if she can simply answer me but early the first class she wouldn't even do that. Her eyes were just wandering but in a way I was lucky because my other student Tracy likes to answer if she knows the answer. Tracy isn't a bad student and she is even better after she has something to eat. She tells me she doesn't eat anything in the morning which isn't good. Everyone knows breakfast is the most important meal of the day. She was kind of sick last class and felt a bit sick again this class. But overall she's cheerful to teach.

The energetic monsters Michael and Ian were there again. They added a 3rd child, a child I really thought I wouldn't see. This boy I had during one of my fun classes but he was so against learning English and has a tendency to speak Chinese when he can. I already had control issues with Tony, the new student, during the fun day and I really wasn't looking forward to dealing with him when I already had to deal with Michael and Ian. But since the class they signed up for was Science I had to teach it. Suki came in today for a makeup conversational class but Monika took that for me.

I needed to relax afterwards so Ada and I went to find some icecream. She was planning on taking the ferry over to TST (which apparently is really cheap from Wan Chai) and dropped by a "Kindergarden" gelato shop. We sampled a few interesting flavours like rice, curry, golden sesame, cheese pie, and tofu. I didn't think I could stomach the flavours so we ended up over at McDonalds. She went to take the ferry and I walked over to Sogo. I just decided to step in and I saw Bernard on the escalator! I shouted out his name and he met me on the second floor. Bernard I had met 1st year through another friend. He had changed schools and I met him again through Rui about 2 years ago. he has been working in Hong Kong for the past year (Reuters) and he just told me that he would be returning to Toronto this coming Weds. But, wow what a small world.

I went home and found that my notebook had hung. It has a tendency to do that here I don't know if it has to do with the heat or if it has to do with the fact that I have little to no hard drive space left on my computer. I did a chkdsk on my harddrive to make sure nothing was wrong and during the chkdsk I was playing around with the chinese writing on my mobile phone and I wrote a SMS message in Chinese to Ada. It took me 1.5 hours to search for words and eventually learn a bit about how to use the strokes to make the search quicker.

Something interesting my cousin wrote a great little piece on males vs. females in different working roles. I had a brief conversaton with Ada about it applied to teachers. What do you think do males or females make better kindergarden teachers? Are females just more sensitive and caring? But do kids like to play rough with the teachers? Do kids tend to respect men more and behave better around men?

posted by Tempest7 @ 11:00