Wednesday, September 28, 2005

being a teacher

The below entry was originally posted to a defunct web blog site, provided here as a record of previous events. Some content might reflect old server and not current server.

===Why its good/bad to be a teacher===

*bad*
* students dont listen sometimes
* they are too noisy, they scream (kids)
* you take hours to make something they dont like
* sometimes no matter how hard you try, no one "gets it"
* if you have to teach something you dont agree with (the sexism in one of my current books being an example "He's a fireman. He's a policeman. She's a homemaker." WHAT?)
* moments of no respect

*good*
* when everyone does that they are supposed to
* the light in someones eyes when they "get it"
* when your students go out of their way to show you they care (two memories spring to mind: teaching aptitude test in my Teaching English as a Second Language class.. I was a Teacher's Assistant in a class full of punky young Japanese kids. They never listened, always made word puns with English sounding like body parts in Japanese, talking in Japanese, throwing papers, (these are college age students, mind you) and they were generally hard to manage. But on the day my teacher came to check on my skills, they were quiet, they lined up and sat at their desks, they answered all my questions, and were basically perfect students. it was so brilliant it almost brought tears to my eyes. the other time that comes to mind is recently when my kids and me were having a "finish book party" and were talking about what kind of snacks should people bring, and someone asked me and i said kind of randomly, "I dont know, I really like orange juice, something like that" and on the day of the book party, the first student opened his bag and pulled out a bottle of orange juice, the next student smiled, pulled out the same, the third laughed and also pulled out orange and eventually all five students revealed they had brought orange juice too. Awww!)
* when my students teach me something. as a teacher i am always learning, and i like to learn from my students too.
* sometimes I get respect from my students. totally cool.

I'm sure I forgot some of the bad, and some of the good. but thats what comes to mind right now!

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

conversations

The below entry was originally posted to a defunct web blog site, provided here as a record of previous events. Some content might reflect old server and not current server.

Or I guess it just turned the 15 on this side of the world. Here are a few moments captured:

My new room mate looking at a poster I made:
Roomie: Whats that say?
Me: uhm.. something like, Simply living makes me happy or something.
Roomie: Really? I'll ask my girlfriend and we'll see if you're right!
Me: huh? Oh? You're girlfriend is Japanese?
Roomie: No! Why?
Me: oh! She can read Japanese? cool...
Roomie: Oh.. that's not Korean? Its Japanese?

Kids say the craziest things. One of my students... about 12... we have an hour class, with only the two of us, so we often have short conversations, this is a real one:

Student: I'm Jesus.
Me: Oh, You're a god???
Student: No... I'm Jesus person.
Me: Ohhh! You're Christian?
Student: Uhh yes. I'm Christian.
Me: Do you pray in English or Korean?
Student: (Korean thinking word) I pray in Korean, all Koreans do. But Jesus is American. I don't know why we pray in Korean.

That's all for the moment. SAMPAI JUMPA LAGI
 
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