February 27th, 2016

February 27th, 2016

(Post-future Editor's note: March 1st?! Was I still 27 at the time this was written?! -G)

10:42 am on March 1st, talking about the 26th

Ah, another weekend comes, and that means another day in the future of catching up on posts. My notes are brief, so let's see what I can remember.

My first class was "The Survival Game", a salon exercise where the class has to determine which items to bring on a 100k trek on the moon. It's fun! The groups were supposed to be made of three people, we had 8 in the class, so I was nominally part of a group- but I didn't end up helping them- you're on your own guys, if I helped it would be too easy!

When we were looking at the different responses my group started off strong, but then took a detour into the "signal flares" territory. Nope, not-a-so-good.

I've actually written down my picks, want to see?:

-Oxygen

-Portable heating unit

-Five gallons of water

-Food concentrate

-Map of the stars as seen from the Moon

-Life raft (to carry things)

-First aid kit

-50 feet of nylon rope (to drag the life raft if nothing else)

-Solar powered reciever/transmitter

-Parachute silk (like a back-up life raft/nylon rope all in one)

And then the five items I wasn't taking on my trip:

-One case of dehydrated milk (too heavy, we have food and water, it's all good)

-Magnetic compass (would it work on the Moon? No, right?)

-Signal flares

-Box of matches

-Two caliber pistols

I'm looking at the class list I've written up- Jasmine, Sissy, Nikita/"Goliath", Kevin, Ann, Mandy, Monica, and Jessica. And I'm drawing a total blank on who Jessica is. Better luck next time, Jessica.

Next was more of my Hamlet English Corner- I was much quicker to skip segments of repeated description, though I still have room for improvement there. We finally got to the ghost telling Hamlet what was up, but we didn't quite finish the speech/scene before the end of class. I was like "uhandHamletsaidwe'resoclosewecandothis... fine, class is over."

After the break came a private beginners class with Sino, Tom, and Laurence. I'd taught Laurence before (maybe the day before?) but I forgot his name and I don't think any of these guys had their English names written on the attendance sheet. Laurence is a Bruce Lee looking guy with glasses, skinny, or rather, taut- he looks very strong, with the most visible sign being his exposed forearms and a thick, well-muscled neck, but he has a shy smile, and these little spaces between his teeth that, the moment you see them, make him seem as young or younger than he is.

Tom was a slouchy young man that looks like he should be using "radical" in everyday conversation- he was the weakest student of this class, which is likely why he wasn't paying as much attention as the others. As opposed to the other way, where not paying attention begets the weakest student. 

Sino... I forget about Sino. Except that when I was talking to Dora at reception I said Laurence had a nice name, Sino had a weird name... different. Dora is improving her English faster than I am my Chinese. Way faster.

Then I had a beginners salon with Laurence again, Jane, Cathy, Andy, Manda, Daisy, Linda who was late but always listens intently and smiles, and a gentleman who has no English name but has a Chinese name that sounds like "Yoshua"- I suggested "Joshua" would be a good name for the sake of ease of rememberance, but we'll see what he does. I wouldn't be surprised if "Yoshua" forgets my suggestion, in a class of beginners he was the weakest student, so he very likely didn't understand me entirely.

Besides that, I have no idea what we discussed here, I didn't even write down the title of the lesson.

Finally I had a lower intermediate level salon class with Sunny (no idea which one), Sherry, Sam, Judy- who had a blank name on the attendance sheet, so I remembered it, the Daisy I'm familiar with, whose name I "locked in" and Steven, who congratulated me on remembering his name, but I told him that I wish I could take credit for this, but no, it's written on the sheet, see? Easy.

I prefer to take credit where I deserve it, and not take credit when I don't deserve it. Usually.

There was also a woman who wasn't supposed to be there, she entered the wrong class, and so all the students were telling her that she needed to leave and find where she was supposed to go. As far as this activity goes, there was a lot of class participation. Sam switched back to English to tell me "wait a minute" and I thought, hey, I'm not going anywhere.

When we finally started: the class was titled "A Tense Lesson" and of course I felt like explaining the joke to everyone, because they only recognized "tense" as in the time frame, not like stress.

For warming up I came up with sentences, pointed at a student, and they had to respond with weither it was past, present, or future tense. The toughest part was me coming up with present tense sentences- and there was Sam, young Sam, large glasses halfway down his little nose, that eternally surprised expression on his face, ALWAYS getting it wrong. Even when basically everyone is whispering the correct answer to him. One time I said "Sam, this is amazing- you've answered three times, there are only three different answers, and YET you still haven't said the correct one." But then he started to get it, joining in with the group sharing answers to whichever student was struggling in the hot-seat, and then I went back to Sam... and he got it wrong again. "Sam! When it's someone else's turn, you know the answer!" 

Don't worry, he was a good sport about it, I think I'm good about knowing which students I can rib and which ones to be more gentle with. But maybe I'm secretly bad at it, and I'll end my days with a shiv in the back. We'll see!

While the groups were working through the worksheets that were about, you know, something, I was writing on the board three past tense sentences about myself, a present tense sentence, and two future tense sentences. Maybe because they were lower intermediate, I don't know, but for whatever reason there was no curious student that got ahead of the worksheets enough to look up and read my sentences in advance- YES. Once everyone was ready, the class read the sentences on the board all together, about where I was born, where I completed high school, what I studied in university, that I was teaching English right now, and that I will become a better teacher in the future...

And then they got to my last sentence: "I will ALSO remember Steven's name." Standing at the side of the class I was staring at Steven, waiting for that moment of recognition on his face, and there it was, one of those dawning smiles. Ah, that's a nice memory.

At some point in the class, maybe at the end, Daisy had to ask my name- so at the end of class, when she was the last student in the room I said it was funny that she forgot my name, because a week or two back I forgot hers (I mentioned it here at the time), and she said that she recognizes that I have a lot of students and will sometimes get confused. I appreciate the understanding- assuming she means it, of course.

That's everything for that day! - 11:42 am