It's been difficult to keep up with this blog recently. With about forty hours a week of in-class time, plus time spent grading exams and planning lessons, I've been working an average of 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday.
Last week, we lost power for about five days, adding one more challenge to planning lessons. With no hot water, no refrigerator (and thus, food going bad), and no lights, the other teachers living in this apartment and I couldn't even rest properly after such a demanding week. The school ended up putting us in another teacher apartment in a neighboring district, stranding my friend and I there all of Sunday with nothing to do. We didn't even have our books to plan lessons.
Then, on Monday, we had to get up early for someone to take us back to our school. To make matters worse, this person was late, and we barely made it to class in time, wearing yesterday's clothes and too tired to give proper lessons.
Maybe I'm lazy, but 40 hours of class is too much for me. I have no time to go and explore the city, which is, after all, the entire reason I came here. If I wanted only to work and make money, I could have stayed in the US.
The work is only made worse by the lack of help on the company's part. How can we plan good lessons when we don't have lights? How can we show up to work looking professional when we don't have water?
And even when we do have these amenities, I find it difficult to teach with the books, which cram an ungodly amount of grammar into 30 hours, before moving onto reading, then to writing and then speaking, segregating each aspect of language as if they don't mix. My students are confused in the grammar section and then bored in the other sections of the book, which have essentially no material or new information.
If I need to keep teaching as I have this past week, I'm not sure I will be able to make it an entire year.
Last week, we lost power for about five days, adding one more challenge to planning lessons. With no hot water, no refrigerator (and thus, food going bad), and no lights, the other teachers living in this apartment and I couldn't even rest properly after such a demanding week. The school ended up putting us in another teacher apartment in a neighboring district, stranding my friend and I there all of Sunday with nothing to do. We didn't even have our books to plan lessons.
Then, on Monday, we had to get up early for someone to take us back to our school. To make matters worse, this person was late, and we barely made it to class in time, wearing yesterday's clothes and too tired to give proper lessons.
Maybe I'm lazy, but 40 hours of class is too much for me. I have no time to go and explore the city, which is, after all, the entire reason I came here. If I wanted only to work and make money, I could have stayed in the US.
The work is only made worse by the lack of help on the company's part. How can we plan good lessons when we don't have lights? How can we show up to work looking professional when we don't have water?
And even when we do have these amenities, I find it difficult to teach with the books, which cram an ungodly amount of grammar into 30 hours, before moving onto reading, then to writing and then speaking, segregating each aspect of language as if they don't mix. My students are confused in the grammar section and then bored in the other sections of the book, which have essentially no material or new information.
If I need to keep teaching as I have this past week, I'm not sure I will be able to make it an entire year.