Ame: Easter's coming!

Ok, so as the blog organizer, I totally failed at writing this thing. Teaching, planning, correcting, extra-curricular activities and visiting have taken up all of my time in the past weeks. I also prefer writing in my own journal when I'm on the train, on the way to or from school. Anyways, I thought this blog would be to write about my culture shock, how I miss home, how teaching is so different and so hard, and so on, but so far, none of this has happened! The only thing missing here is people from home and life would be perfect!

Last time I wrote here, I was still observing. I have been teaching ever since then. I much prefer teaching than observing. My first impressions from the observation week have turned out to be really accurate. The hardest part is teaching my form 1s because I only see them 1 hour per week. Their regular teacher is not helping me either. She talks with them in Cantonese and laughs at their jokes while I'm trying to teach. One time she was even reading the newspaper in the middle of the class while I was trying my hardest to get their attention. I have tried tips and strategies from Mr. Howden but it didn't really work. Why would they listen to me when their teacher doesn't even seem to respect me? They are still nice kids though, always very happy to see me. They are not very good in English so I have to put pictures for just about everything because they don't understand half of what they read. That took some adjustments, and I'm still adjusting, but I think that this morning worked well (I showed them a bunch of videos to explain new vocabulary words).

My form 4s works really well, but I find it to be the most boring of my three groups. That is because I need to follow the book and we did a lot of grammar lately because they had a uniform quiz on grammar and reading comprehension. The things that they learn are so not useful and their tests are crazy. They need to find the information from 4 or 5 different sources to build a text and they need to word it almost exactly like the sample result. There is also a huge difference in their level of English within the same classroom even though they are supposed to be at the same level. This makes things a bit harder too. I try as much as I can to give them a lot of visual support (this helps them a lot) and to incorporate some games or use fun topics in their writing assignments. I find that my CT babies them a bit too much though. She keeps giving them almost all the answers before they have even started. For their text, she gave them the beginning of all the paragraphs and they only had to complete the sentences and add a few things. I wonder what they will do in their uniform test when they have to do everything by themselves!

My form 6s are the best. They are so good even though they don't think they are. I have conversations with some of them for hours after class. I went out for lunch with some of them, which was really fun. I am also bringing half of the class to Ocean Park with me during the Easter break! I would've taken all of them but we could only bring so many... I like this class a lot because I can do almost what I want with them. We have watched a bunch of movies with discussion questions and writing and speaking assignments. I have also tried something that I found at SPEAQ, and it worked pretty well. Today, I have just started a project with them on teen drug use in Hong Kong. It seemed to interest them a lot. The only thing that bothered me is that I wanted them to do a movie over a couple of classes but my CT told me that they would do it during the Easter break. I didn't want to give them any homework because they already have so many, and I wanted this to be fun. I was really disappointed with that. Anyways, I hope they still enjoy it. This is my favourite class and I will miss them so much when it will be time to leave! I have created a bond with a lot of them, as I talk to them a lot outside of class. I can't wait to go to Ocean Park with them! It will be only me and Juanita (and Mr. Tong) with 22 students (5 of her form 4s, 2 of mine and 15 of my form 6s). It will be great!

So far, I like my experience a lot. I wouldn't mind staying a bit longer and I'm sure it will be hard when the time to say goodbye will come. It is funny to say, but when we came back from Mainland China this weekend, I surprised myself when I said "Ah! Finally home!" because now, Hong Kong really feels like home (with a few people missing, of course!)