I'm afraid that for as much I enjoyed teaching last year (and still do, I'm here because I wanted to see my students grow and express themselves) I'm already all used up. This past week was pretty awful. My lesson plan went to pieces because it was a little complex and no one was listening. I wound up writing a letter to a head teacher about one class's behavior and my own rather unprofessional response. I also just felt overwhelmed for English club interviews. They threw in so much stuff at the last minute, that even though it shouldn't have been a big deal I didn't take the notes I should and struggled to figure out how to sort out students for English club. Ideally, I'd take them all because students who come to English Corner or club tend to be somewhat self-selecting anyway but that's not how things work this year. I didn't have to actually interview everyone, only about 15 students but I was just told to score the students out of 10. No specifics on what to look out for, just "out of 10" and they needed to read a dialogue so I actually had to interview two at a time, then one, then two again, then one. And in the end, the teachers looked at me and said "You don't have detailed notes?" NO! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DETAILING AND TAKING NOTES ON? I feel awful. I'm angry. I screamed and cried the first time I had a chance to be alone and felt awful about who may and may not be in English club because I did this wrong. And I designed the interview questions! I bet I look so silly to everyone else who works here. I can't even do something simple like an interview with 15 students, but then again, others can't do something as simple as tell me what it is I'm supposed to do. We didn't even know where the interviews were going to happen! Last minute is part of life in China, but for some reason it really threw me one today. And they were all so good, I didn't know how to mark down scores or anything for students.
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