Day 293

Tuesday October 6

My first class never wants to study for long. The boy wants to sleep all the time. Today he was sleeping in my class. I kept waking him up but it didn't help much. He only participated a little. Today we were talking about excuses. They participated and came up with some good excuses for the exercises in the book. When we got finished with one lesson they didn't want to do the second lesson. They begged to just do the 2nd lesson with their partner and not as a class. I try to do the lesson as a class first so they can come up with the right answers so they will be able to give me reasons when they have a speaking test. If I just let them do it on their own the speaking test will come up and they won't understand what I mean. I just let them do the 2nd lesson with their partner. I was going to be the boys partner but he wouldn't say anything. The other students weren't doing the activity the right way. Oh well. when the test time comes along it will be their loss for trying to rush me so they can have free time. They were all copying each others homework for grammar class.

In my 2nd class I only had one student. Now the other student has missed 2 speaking classes in a row. My lesson plan said I was suppose to only do lesson 11 so that's what I did. I wrote prompts on the board so he'd know how to answer in a complete sentence. Then I had him read the questions and answers. We were done in 25 minutes. I didn't know what else to do. I gave him a word search to do. He did it for a while, but got bored with it and played a game on his cell phone. I hate that class was boring but there isn't much you can do with only one student. We went over the whole lesson twice.

My 3rd class was in the computer lab. They were all doing their work. The boy was moving very slowly. Everyone seemed to be doing their work slower. I think only one person actually finished reading all the articles. One boy came in really late. Then he didn't want to do his work. I had to keep begging him to do it and I don't think he even read any of it.

I hate having to give up makeup tests because students miss test day. I gave one to a boy in my last class. He didn't want to do it. I told him I was going to give him zero points. He wanted to know why he had to do it. I told him because the rest of the class had already taken theirs. 2 of the students didn't bring their book to class. Why do these students constantly forget their books? Today we were talking about Amusement parks and shopping. They want to have free time so they tell me to hurry. I try to stretch the lesson so I won't finish too early and they are begging me to go faster. I told them we needed to finish our lesson. After we finished I asked them to speak with a partner. There are 4 people so each person had a partner, but one girl and one boy won't cooperate. I was upset that they keep trying to rush me when Im just trying to do my job. I asked them "do you tell your Korean teacher to hurry up?" and they said "no". I said "then why do you make me rush through the lesson?". They said "because its the last class of the day". I told them "I have to teach my lesson, too" They said they were sorry. They wrote on the board that they were sorry and they said sorry again at the end of class..

I hate this semester! I'm so ready for it to be over! I'm stuck with these crappy books till I leave. ugh! The textbooks are horrible and boring and I don't even have an organized system for giving tests. The lessons are too short or too boring or too difficult! I don't even know what to assign for homework. Why couldn't we just use the books we had last semester? I actually liked them!! The students are driving me crazy! No one wants to study. No one wants to practice speaking with a partner. They beg me to give the kids time to speak. how is that going to work if the kids won't cooperate??