The Teachers are Students Too!

Wednesday, November 12. When I wake up this morning, I realize I am sick. Achy and scratchy throat. I pull out the Vitamin C and the other things in my limited arsenal but I have a feeling it's too late. (Interestingly, last night when Liam and Sunshine were visiting me, I coughed - and Sunshine asked me if I were sick - I said "no" - apparently, she knew more than I did.)

I teach my class in the afternoon, which is observed by all of the Senior English teachers (they are doing this every week now). This week, I'm teaching English Proverbs: First, explaining what a proverb is (using "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" - actually they have the same proverb in Chinese, something like "Every Day, One Apple" - which is cool), then dividing them into groups, giving each group a card with a proverb and its meaning on it. Each group has to write a short dialogue explaining the proverb. The last 10 minutes of class, they act them out in front of the classroom. When I'm walking around handing out the proverbs, I ask the teachers if they want one - and they do! In fact, they take all of the ones I have left over! And then after the students act out their proverbs, two groups of teachers do too! What a hoot! The students think this is way cool.

After class, I talk about Thursday's English Corner with teachers (when all I want to do is go home to bed). Unfortunately, I can't crash until I organize some material for English Corner tomorrow. We are going to talk about Barack Obama first and then I'll have a handout with words we use to describe Physical Appearance. I just have to figure out what I want to do with it. (This idea came out in a conversation I had with some of the teachers; they didn't know the words "blond" or "brunette" so I thought it would be fun to do something like this with the students.)

Take my laptop into the bedroom so I can watch a movie in bed! It's nice having my wireless router connected - couldn't do that before.