The last few days have been very busy, but quite good.
On Tuesday, I went to breakfast with some friends. We had this amazing donut-equivalent meal that was basically puri and mango sauce. It is a little puff of fried dough, slightly smaller than your palm, and you add sugar and salt to it. Then you dip it in this mango blend of goodness. It was amazing. Plus the cook (who happens to be our future cook, yeah!) kept making and making them. So you really have to learn to exercise self-control and stop....
I started teaching on Tuesday completely differently than I had on Monday. I started by asking them how they behaved on Monday. Once I had guilted them into saying they were quite bad, I wrote four rules on the board (very polite ways of saying sit down, listen, and be quiet) and ask them if they thought they were fair. Once everyone agreed, they really got into the rules. The next day, they even added a 5th rule. When people would do something wrong, they'd say, 'so and so isn't respecting you', etc. So that was good, although bordering on tattling. But to really bribe them, I wrote the number 50 on the board. I said I'd give points for being good, following rules, and doing well, but I would take points away if they broke the rules and were noisy. If they reached 100, they'd get a snack. At 0, they'd get extra homework.
So they had top notch behavior for the rest of the day (yesterday and Tuesday). Oddly enough, I don't think they know what 'snack' means, because one kid came up after class and asked me. I think I could have given them nothing, and the points would have sufficed. Oh well. Thank goodness they are listening now, at least. They also like to give me high fives, but I don't mind that. They are currently at 92 points. It will be interesting to see if they can behave themselves, or if they will get so excited to reach 100 that my plan backfires and they can't concentrate anymore....
I am having a very hard time learning their names- I really need to see something spelled, rather than hearing it, to learn it. So the students who have names I have heard before (like Osama, he is easy to remember!), I can learn just fine. But the rest are just going in one ear and out the other. I am having the same problem with learning Hindi- I have to phonetically write everything out, and then I learn it. But hearing it doesn't work at all. Anyhow, I bought some tag board (well, it is really like thin card stock, but I'll take what I can get with the language barrier here) and am going to have them all make standing name tags for their desks. So that should make it a lot easier for me. I'll let them give me a quiz at some point to check on my learning skills.
They are still exhausting, though. How do you full-time teachers do this for an entire day? 2.5 hours is enough to wear me out! Plus all the grading and lesson planning.... when do you ever sleep?
Tomorrow I have a break, though. This weekend we are going to visit my husband's family in Bangalore! He is already there (his current case happens to be in that city), so I am leaving tomorrow and coming back on Monday. So that should be a lot of fun. Not sure what we will do yet, but it will be nice to see family!
I met a very nice cab driver on Monday, too. He seems to be a cross between a normal cab driver and a personal driver. He drives this German fellow 2-3 times a day, so now he's driving me to and from school each day, too. So that is very nice because (1) he drives well; (2) he speaks English decently; (3) he knows WHERE the places are that I am going to/from; and, most importantly (4) he has a newer car so my head doesn't hit the ceiling. Most of the cabs are too short and you have to slouch/hunch when you are in them. It is okay for a 5 minute drive, but quite a pain for an hour drive.
No comments:
Post a Comment