Mid-Class Post

At the moment, I'm proctoring a test for my iBT students, which would be great, if not for the fact that I've been sitting here for 2 hours already with nothing to do except surf Wikipedia and check up on current events and comic news.

My classes tend to run the gammot, from 6-8 year olds up to middle schoolers. With the younger kids, we do a little of everything: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I like the little kids; they're young and energetic and it's easy to get caught up in their enthusiasm and to play off of it. I'm used to dealing with little kids, also, since that's where a lot of my teaching experience is, so the whole discipline thing has never been a problem. The kids here, most people say, tend to be more respectful and attentive to their teachers. I'm not sure I agree; I see the same issues as any of the kids I've dealt with in the states. Sure, they're not inner city tough or anything, but they definitely have that little kid selfishness that you need to keep in check, and some tend to show their privileged status from time to time in that they mouth off or initially refuse something. Also, when you're tired, it's holy murder to keep up with them, because after an elementary age class, you just feel drained. It's not easy work.

My later classes are all middle school age, and they tend to be as different as vodka and gin martinis: same name, but some are just clearly superior. They are broken down by skill level, with the lower level kids still being pushed further than is probably beneficial due to their age. And they know they're low level, so stack that on their burdgeoning self-consciousness and the embaressment of performing in front of their peers and you've got some classes where you're lucky if you can get one kid to answer in a 10 minute period. It's frustrating, more than any other class it is, but in a weird way it's also very invigorating. I walk out of those classes sometimes feeling more pumped up than I did starting the day. And the small victories that you accomplish feel much greater than the other classes. Yeah, I sound like an after school special, but fuck off, it's true!

The upper level kids are fun too, but they present their own challenges. They're much brighter and more advanced in their English than the other classes, so they tend to be able to speak more and about things that are more interesting and advanced. But the classes they're in are terrible, and I mean bamboo under the nails with lemon juice awful. They're all TOEFL focused, which means we're just drilling them on the test, but on top of that, the program structure is just so half-assed and convoluted sometimes that I want to scream. And the kids themselves tend to have a bit more personality, but that also means that a lot of them tend to be cocky. They've studied and lived abroad, they're hot stuff in the English teaching community, and more than enough of them know it. But I do tend to enjoy these classes the most out of any of them, so don't let me make it sound that bad.

That's the low down! Time's up! Later, taters