Day 264

Monday September 7

My first class was good. I didn't have a way to print all my stuff so I just took my laptop to class and showed her the pictures of some of the words so she would know what it was. She can spell the words but she has a hard time trying to fit them into a sentence even after I give her the definitions. We'll have to keep working on that. We reviewed lessons 1 and 2 and started on lesson 3.

My 2nd class was pretty good. This was the class I was worried about since all I have is a picture and a few questions. This class is going to take a lot of preparation. I made up a lot of more questions to add to the lessons. We were talking about police officers and hospitals. We had a good class and it actually worked out where I had enough material to last all class. I just asked them a ton of questions about police officers, traffic laws and hospitals. If they are good and they ask for candy I usually give them a piece. Its a mini sucker. One of my kids was so funny. She said "candy is little, but my body is big. Can I have 2?" I told her no. I just give everyone one piece.

We had a good class in my 3rd class. They kinda disrupted the flow of class. We were talking about items and their uses. In the middle of class they wanted to see my phone. I let one of the students get it out of my desk and bring it to me. They were looking at it. 2 of the students wanted my phone number and they gave me theirs. Then we finished the lesson talking about whats the difference between ____and ____. They did a good job on that. Things such as fan vs air conditioner, video camera vs. camera. Then we talked about which is better. things such as "which is better: summer or winter?" When we finished they had some free time.

My 4th class is going to be a problem class-at least its only once a week and its only till November. I don't even know if Im suppose to be giving tests in that class. I seriously don't know what to put on the test. Plus the lesson is so long that I need the whole class to do the lesson. I'm just going to watch them and if they are participating then they get a good grade. If they aren't participating and doing their work then I'll minus 5 points every class. I went into the classroom and I didn't have enough copies so I had to go make more(some people who had books last week didn't bring their book). Then the students were complaining about it being hot in the classroom. The air wasn't working in that classroom. So we moved into a vacant classroom. By the time we got settled in it was already 15 mins into class so I lost 15 mins. Its hard to cover a lot of material in that class. The lessons are way too long. 4 girls kept talking during class and I had to keep begging them to do their work. They kept playing with their phones also and not really participating when I asked them to speak to each other. I'm just going to take points off of their grade. If you participate and be good in class you'll make a good grade. If you goof off and not speak I'm going to take off points. I wrote on the board that I would take away 5 points for not speaking. Other than that we had a pretty good class. I feel like we arent really getting anything accomplished because of the people who won't participate. Next week we need to get down to business and cover more material.

My last class causes problems too. I bribe my students with candy. They are trying to bribe me also! One of them brought me a chocolate milk and asked if they could play a game. They are a pretty good class, but they like to be loud and they like to play. They try to go ahead in the book and they try to make me rush through class so they will have time to play a game. I couldn't get them to play spelling game. We reviewed lesson 1 today and took a test. 4 of the students did a good job. One of the students didn't do so great. They knew they were having a test today so they should have studied. Today we finished lesson 2 and started lesson 3. I told them they will have a test on Friday. I told them we have to finish page 10 before we could play a game. We got to page 10 by rushing through so I dont even know if they understand the material. They got to play a game for about 8 minutes but they were too loud. I kept telling them to be quiet. I told them before the game that they needed to whisper. At the end of class I said that if they didn't be quiet then there wouldnt be any more games. I told them no game on Wednesday. There won't be a game on Friday either. We have got to study.

After class I told the person in charge that I needed to be connected to the internet. It took a long time but the teacher's assistant finally got me connected to the network. now I have another problem. I wanted to be connected to the printer so I could print. My school is behind and still uses Windows XP and since I have a newer operating system (Vista) I can't connect to the printer bc its XP. They may be able to connect but they don't know. All that work and I still have to beg people to print for me.

I'm about ready to just buy a cheap printer and print everything I need at home. That might be my only solution.

I decided I didn't want to go to the gym tonight so I skipped.