Classes on Saturday?????... no way!!!! I'm on vacation!!!!

Yeah, that's exactly what my students said this morning when they had to come to school even though it's Easter vacation period.
Hey, it's not my fault they're in a high performance football program and are required to stay on until their coaches set them free. I don't even know if they are actually going to have any free days; but that's not for me to decide.
Do you actually think I wanted to come in on Saturday??? Of course not but I'm always here, aren't I??? I'm sure Maryk, Carlos and Adriana could use some R&R. Well, at least we won't have to come to class for two weeks and we can all use this time for "school madness detox". I might need more than two weeks, though.

:) GLB

Teacher's helper can be a real pain in the butt...

If you've ever had one of these kids in your class you'll understand.

English pronunciation is a difficult part of teaching. Usually kids come in with whatever they learned when they were younger and it seems they didn't get much help from their teachers. I mean, it's a bit frustrating when their pronunciation of 'yes' comes out as 'jesssss"; or this funny way of adding 'ation' to the end of any word in spanish, which in their opinion, is spoken English.

Such is the case of Andres. Whenever a student asked me the ever present "how do you say such and such word in English, teacher?????" Andres would come to the rescue with one of his magical words ending in 'ation'. Needless to say, this resulted in greater confusion for his classmate and everyone else suppressing laughter unsuccessfully. He really meant well. Andres had been a student at the American School his whole life, so he figured he could be my helper and basically answer his friends' questions because 'he knew the word and they didn't'.
So every day of that semester I had to put up with all kinds of nonsense from Andres...frankly there were days when I laughed out loud, I just couldn't help it. Take for example, how do you say 'engrapadora' in English, teacherrrr???? (engrapadora is the word in spanish for stapler. Before I could say it, Andres would answer 'engrapadoration' without missing a beat. So we had a great number of these popping out from Andres at all times.
I did get back at him one day (sometimes you really wish you could make the kid experience some of the annoyance he causes).
Andres himself had a "how do you say such and such word in English??" question for me. It was too good not to take adventage of. Andres wanted to know how to say "cuadro" in English. He meant portrait or painting and I knew that but I answered "for you, it's 'quadration'". After two seconds the whole group was laughing (I was too) and Andres just blinked and frowned. I let him process that while the rest of the group finished their writing test.

Hi again. Not been here in a long time. My life has been going around in circles and has been changing a lot in the past two years. For starters, I moved to a different part of town. Got a new job. Left it. got another one and left that one too. Haven't you ever felt like you just don't fit in? Anyway, I am working with kids again and not with annoying middle school brats or with high school good-for-nothings who don't give a rat's ass about school. I have 6th graders. It really is such a relief. These kids work better than the older ones and have a lot more enthusiasm and self-respect too. For now this is enough for me.

I'm still here...

I haven't been writing a lot these days. Just too caught up in a very tangled web of stuff to do and I don't know where to start.
My students are ready to finish this term. Officially school is out on April 30. We start again on May 12.
These days it's kind of difficult to deal with them because to be honest, we are just about fed up with each other. It's a harsh thing to say but that's the way it is. I just wish I could have a lot of students like the boy in "The Blind Side". The boy was from the projects, yet he had manners. That's difficult to find these days, even the kids from "good" families are severely lacking in manners and general values. *SIGH*

Anyway, tomorrow another week begins and I'm not really looking forward to it but a warrior never gives up.

Back to reality :S

So vacations are over. :( I can't say I'm happy at all because I very much got used to the idea of staying in bed until late (at least past 9 am)instead of waking up at the crack of dawn to be sitting in my office by 7:30 am.

I also hate coming back and having less than half of my students actually in class because they haven't come back from wherever it is they went...and those who do show up are in perpetual "lazy" mode.

This is just one of those days when you wish I could quit teaching and find some other activity that's actually worthwhile because the way things are right now, students don't give a damn about school.
I just hope this feeling of despair isn't permanent.

How to acquire new vocabulary every day...believe it or not

As an ESL teacher it strikes me as funny when students tell me they've realized they lack vocabulary in English. Duh...no surprise there considering they never do any reading, not even in their own language because Reading is boring, according to them.
I was brought up in a bilingual home, so both English and Spanish are my mother languages. However, I was introduced to reading at a very early age. When I say I was introduced, I mean that it wasn't forced on me, I watched my dad read at all times and so just followed his example. There were tons of books at home, there were many others I could check out of the library (to me this was heaven)and pretty soon I couldn't conceive a life without having something to read.
Why is reading so important? it provides you with endless new vocabulary, spelling and correct grammar. It's infinitely more entertaining and you're not even aware that you are learning because it is not done within a class setting.
To show you an example, I'll tell you about Simon. Simon was a korean student I had in fifth grade once. Simon had arrived in Mexico when he was in the second grade. All he could speak and understand was Korean. simon was extremely smart and learned Spanish very fast. By the time he reached the fifth grade he was fluent in Spanish and English as well as Korean. By fluent I mean he could understand, read, write and speak. His classmates could hardly master their own language, and English?....no comments. I had never seen a grade shool kid who ordered as many books from the Scholastic books catalog as Simon did; and read them all as well. When talking to his mother I congratulated her for investing money in Simon's favorite hobby...which I vehemently share. What's the difference between Simon and his classmates?...forget the fact that he's asian and asians are wired differently; the answer is that Simon reads and they don't. I prefer knowledge to ignorance any day So I'm going to play "Simon says"....and Simon says: READ
:)GLB

Why are husbands so difficult? part 2 of you can't imagine how many more...

What's your take on husbands who want to play Dr. Sears? Seriously, It would be funny if it weren't so annoying. Take this for example; my husband has gotten the notion that he must care for my health. Not a bad notion of course, but when it becomes an obsession it loses all its charm. So now he's telling me I should eat this and not eat that because my health is at stake (anyone would think I'm in my deathbed). I do admit I love food; I can't deny that. And maybe I should eat more veggies and fruit,but I drink water I don't drink Coca Cola like I'm dehydrating in the desert on a mission. You know what my husband's favorite snack is?...bread dipped into a glass of Coke with an iceberg in it. He can drink an average of 12 liters of coke and a whole bag of bread in one weekend... and I'm the one who should mind her diet??
Don't get me wrong, I adore my husband but we just don't agree on many things and this is one of them.