Back to the Drawing Board

Monday, December 8. Two classes in the morning. This week, it is a lesson on pronunciation (differentiating between "th" and "s", "l" and "r", "v" and "w") and tongue twisters. I found some great ones for this collection of sounds. Here's a sample:

- Thirteen thin and thoughtless men sought some thistles in the field.
They were very thorough, though they only searched on Thursdays.

- A loyal warrior will rarely worry why we rule.

- Vivian was very wary of wearing weird vests. (Actually, I wrote that one!)

So later this afternoon, when I'm in the middle of having things photocopied for Teacher Training and English Corner, Mr. Z calls and says he wants to talk to me about my paper. So I hustle over to the Senior School for the 7 minutes I have remaining before heading over to the Junior School. The bottom line is he doesn't like my essay; he thinks I have included too many things. I try to explain that it is about my journey of discovering Hunan Province, but to the extent I can understand what he is trying to say, I think he wants me to pick just one thing and write about it in depth. Needless to say, I am totally bummed out. In fact, I almost start crying, which then makes me mad! I have spent a fair amount of time putting this together, and it wasn't something that I had to do. I could have been doing more important things, like knitting! :) I had a story to tell, and I told it. Now I don't know what to do.

Later: I have Tiffany and David read the essay just to get their reaction. They think that maybe Mr. Z just didn't get the thrust of the whole thing. So I'm adding a few things that will, I hope, make it clearer. We'll see. I also sent it to Tara for her opinion. Grrrrrr.