Day 210--He said an English dirty word

July 15 Wednesday

I've been here 30 weeks. I'm almost halfway done! I'm up to the point where my days remaining are almost smaller than my days that I've been here. I've been here 210 days and I have 228 (or a little less) days left. 30 weeks of teaching left. Oh my!

Being a teacher is a lot of work! I spend all of my planning time before school from 2-4 grading papers, making tests and essays and making homework. Its a ton of work. If I had premade homework and tests that came along with the books it would be a whole lot easier, but no thats not the way it works. I have to make my own stuff.

I feel like I can't ever get anything accomplished! I went into my first class and I had to get 2 students who were absent to make up a test. So I have to wait to start class. One of the students wants to talk instead of do the test and he wants to do the test wrong. One of my students lost his book so I have to make copies for him all the time. Then 2 students told me they lost their homework paper and they wanted another copy. One of the students filled in the blanks with nonsense and expected me to give him credit for doing his homework. He lost it-I'm not giving him credit for filling in the blanks with the wrong answers. 3 of my kids changed their names. I only got one page done in class today.

My students are so funny. During class one of my students said "He said an English dirty word". Then he starts spelling the 'dirty' word. He says "Sexi". haha. He can't even spell it. Sexy is not a dirty word. Then later one of the girls hears him spelling and she blurts out "sexy". haha.

I didn't get much accomplished in my 2nd class. First i had them do a test and they took a long time on that even though it was simple and I gave them examples. They like to talk and no matter how many times I tell them to be quiet they still talk during the test. Then we started the lesson. We were talking about family. I asked them to draw a picture of their family and label it. They turned it into a complicated thing. One of them was writing something totally off topic. He started writing "my name is....I am..years old. I like TV. What? I told you to draw your family. then one guy doesnt draw he just writes. I'm just trying to get them to talk about their family and I thought letting them draw a picture would be a fun activity but they can't even do it right. No one was paying attention while I was telling them about the essay.

When I was in that class again I saw one of the essays that I gave out to level 3 laying on the desk. great. won't be getting an essay from that kid. I don't know what to do. These kids won't do their homework and they wont turn in their essays. I'm wasting my time coming up with topics and making homework. I try to reward them for doing homework but that doesn't help.

I have around 50 students. Right now about half of them have done their homework for every class. I have one level who is really good about doing their homework. Everyone in the class always has it and they look forward to getting the stickers.

My 3rd class seemed to be tired and bored all during class. I'm sorry that I don't know how to make it interesting. We were just talking about animals.

I walked into my last class and they were asking for more free time. I told them no. They had 10 minutes of free time before I came in. I said "you already had 10 minutes". I passed out their tests, checked homework, went over homework and then started class. We went over a few pages today. They were really good. I didn't have any problems. One of the main troublemakers was absent today. I saw one of the boys crying during class. I don't know what was wrong. No one was bothering him. He didn't cry for long. He was fine just a few mins later. We finished one unit and started a new unit. Some of the new words were hard so I made out a sheet defining all the words and even adding some pictures. We are studying about Ancient Egypt. When we had 10 minutes left they were all rushing me. One student said "hurry up. I want to go home". wow. Another one said "are we done yet?". I said "not yet". I was trying to pass out homework and explain the essay although I dont think anyone was listening. We usually ended class at 8:45 but for some stupid reason we started a new schedule and class is over at 8:55. I think since it was the first day of the change they are still used to getting out at 8:45.