Friday, April 18, 2008

It's the weekend and I'll sigh if I want to.

With relief that is. It's been a long week. The first bit was normal, but Wednesday sort of threw things into an uproar. I'd just been having an excellent time helping Tammy enjoy the amazing clothing sale going on at my favorite Cheb store, Kenvelo, when we were first warned of a subbing job. Now let me just say, that I've done my fair share of subbing, and the thought of doing more wasn't exactly high on my to-do list. In fact, I'd told Tammy I wouldn't do it. But, as usual, when it came right down to it and Kate asked me, I said yes. I'm such a sucker.
I'd actually subbed for this class before, around Easter time and they were REALLY quiet. This time, I had two different students and one of them was quite the live wire. Oh the memories of Alaska. At least they talked a bit. And they didn't even seem to mind when I made them play Simon Says. Not always the biggest hit with 12 to 15 year olds, but it worked.
When I was done I had only an hour to make sure my evening classes were all in order, which meant I had no time to plan for Thursday. Generally I'm pretty good at planning a day in advance, so when Kate also informed me that she would be coming to observe my teaching on Friday, meaning I would need to plan both for Thursday and a Friday review all in one day I was a wee bit stressed. Especially because we also have our Czech class on Thursday. (sigh)
Needless to say Thursday was very long, and since I didn't sleep much last night I was a bit concerned about how my observation would go today. The students are at the point in the year where they're pretty much done with class. They're currently doing a book to prepare for a test, but it's almost exactly the same material as what we covered in the book they just finished, so the review can be painstaking at times. I mean, who wants to repeat the same information twice in one year? All the same, they managed to look alive and cooperative, and they even wrote things down when I asked them to (an activity that tends to draw groans and rolled eyes on other days) and in the end Kate told me it was a nearly flawless lesson! Pretty high praise coming from her to be certain.
So now I'm happy to announce that it is the weekend. I can stop thinking about classes for at least the next 48 hours, and just enjoy life.
One more point of interest, I learned today that my new teammate will be a girl named Laura Myers. So far all I know is that she is from Kansas and has a degree in English Education. Sounds promising thus far. I'm really looking forward to getting to know more about her. And on that note: Happy WEEKEND!!!

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