Friday, October 7, 2011

7 Day Week

The coming week has seven days of classes. We start on Saturday and then end on Friday. It's going to be exhausting, but I'm looking forward to getting back into the classroom and doing some edifyin'. Them kids gonna get them some book learnin' and it's gonna be awesome. I'm just hoping they haven't forgotten everything over break.

I feel like I'm figuring out more and more things about how to teach my students, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how they're gonna do on the next test, and the one after that. I've got high hopes for them.

I've also started learning a little bit of (the Dali regional version of )baizuhua (the language of the Bai people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bai_people ). About 90% of the population where I am is Bai, so I want to learn how to say a few basic things in it. There isn't, sadly, any sort of information about the Bai language (it doesn't really even have a written language) so I'm going to chill with my noodle guy and just ask him and other people how to say things....we'll see how it goes.

4 comments:

  1. The bad news is: after a 7 day work week, there are 5 more work days. Keep learnin' those kids!

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  2. Will, did you see Tessa's description of her young Tel Aviv-ians? I was trying to picture her doing the Mr.K Detention Stare. Maybe she ought to go more Julie Andrews.

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  3. I want a chance to terrify those kids. Apart from the detention stare, I also enjoy moving them, making them stand up, making them do push-ups, making them write sentences, lecturing them, and taking away their class points. Showing up at their homes to talk to their parents is good times too.

    There's also a lot of stuff that they taught us about discipline and teaching that isn't really useful in the Chinese context (because of class size and cultural expectations) that might be useful in that kind of classroom and context. :D

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  4. I get less chatty after push-ups, myself.

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