I’ve finished my first full week of classes (all 16.5 hours) and even though I only work Monday-Wednesday, I am exhausted! I would prefer to work 4 hours a day over 4 days, but the students don’t have classes on Thursday afternoons because of sports. So as of 6:30pm Wednesday evening, I am en week-end.
However, since I’m teaching a new English “soutien” class for our Italian exchange students, my entire weekend goes by in a flash because I spend all my time preparing for it. We’re working in the computer lab, so I’m preparing tons of online flashcards and listening exercises. I almost lost my voice yesterday recording tons of words to illustrate all the vowel differences. My students are so enthusiastic about improving their English so I feel like giving them as much material as possible to work with. I’m trying to incorporate all accents of English instead of just American or British. I actually spent about 6 hours yesterday just finding and downloading more audio and video files that I thought would help with their listening comprehension. (Elllo.org and Real English are awesome, btw.)
The rest of my classes are going fine so far, except for a few immature boys in my first year classes. (Why is it always boys??) I feel much better this year since I know exactly what I need to do and what the students need to learn. Plus knowing that I’m only 10 minutes from home instead of 50 is quite nice.
Only 2 more weeks until Toussaint vacation!
