The Last Day of Regular Classes

Today there were no afternoon classes, but since I don't have any afternoon classes anyways, I wasn't really affected. The two classes that I had weren't that bad. The first 8th grade class was dead. I'm not sure why though. They seemed to be on vacation mode already too, but not in the sense that you might envision. They didn't talk about what they were going to do, they just sat there. Only spoke when we forced them to repeat. We played a song and they had to fill in the blanks and then do a word search. They were pretty good with the activities though. There was this one girl who found all the words in the word search faster than the teachers. I think she was doing it while we were explaining how to do it.

The 11th graders also had a song to listen to. They had different songs, actually raps. But the principle was the same, fill in the blanks and to listen. I was really surprised that most of the students couldn't do it. In my opinion this is one of the highest level classes in the whole school. They have the highest ability to speak more fluently, and highest for comprehension. But somehow they just couldn't get it. Quite surprising for me actually. And it was based on travel which was the topic of their last test. Their geography sucks too. They didn't know where many of the the places were, even though they spoke about them in their presentations. I guess that's bad points for comprehension. Well, I've got to work out the kinks for that one.

The rest of the day, I just finished up some things for the next semster. I didn't want to fall behind with all the things that I needed to get done for the senior electives. I'm really going to try to push the envelope with the activities we will be doing and raising the level of comprehension, since it will my first opportunity to get the chance with the seniors. They, in my opinion, have the lowest level in the school, both in ability to speak and comprehension. All I get is hi, how are you? out of them. But the activities I have planned will get them to think a lot more and to speak a lot more. I actually will be the main teacher for the electives. I originally only had 6 classes to teach, but since CP will be in Australia for her younger sister's wedding, I'll have to take on her classes too. Which means that I will have 7 senior classes, and a whole bunch of other classes. I will also have to administer two 11th grade oral exams, which are first period, and won't have a day off in January. Only Sundays. The workload increased a lot, to say the least.

But I'm excited that I finally get to do my own thing. I mean I volunteered to take it on, they were going to just do away with it for a little while, but I told them that I would do it and make the extra effort to get all the things done. Since I think it wouldn't help the students to just take it out. But it's turning out to be a lot of work, that I still have yet to finish. I mean I'll be working on all these things over winter break, and I'll even need to start planning for what I'm going to do for February and March even. Just so I don't fall behind like I see many of the other teachers have. I think I'll lose the efficacy if I do. So I tried to finish what I could and made myself a to do list for the rest of the January. And got some things done right away.