Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Robots Can to Fly.

BLOG #15
October 5

So It's October and I'm still in Kazakhstan. It's so funny because I really seriously wanted to go home so bad the first couple of days - actually probably the whole first week I was here! (I didn't tell people that though haha) But I haven't felt that way since... at least not to that extreme :) I'm glad I'm still here and can't believe it's been over a month already! But then at the same time... I feel like all that we've been doing couldn't possible have been squeezed in such the short time that we've been here. (For an 'English teacher' that sentence could use some work!) But you get the point. It's hard and sometimes overwhelming to try to explain the way time passes - it just does. I try not to think about it too much :) So today I taught 6th grade (a different, smaller class than the previous one) It was a really fun class, the lesson was based "can". Echo and I were splitting the same class, and we planned the lesson together. We played a couple of cute acting out games and then at the end of class had the students create robots that 'can' do 2 things, but 'can't' do 1 thing. They would present their sentences and another student would act as the robot. They really got into this - they would turn on their "robots" name them and such. However, having the same counterpart... after witnessing Echo's class, my counterpart knew what the games and things were that I was hinting toward and basically dominated my classroom lol. She translated basically every word I said, as soon as I would say it. (And also told the students that "No. Robots can't fly". For crying out loud why can't a robot fly!? Way to crush a kid's imagination ...does she not know that there are robots flying around in space now? And if you're going to be so technical, why can a robot read a book, but not fly!) Anyway, the point of having the kids (or me) act out the verbs that are new is so that they really understand what the action is that the verb stands for. What do you need to act out if the teacher just translates every word....? It's almost like she was so excited to understand the games and things that she just jumped right in and had to prove to her students (or me?) that she knows what's going on. Really bizarre. My kids enjoyed the class but they could have had so much more fun with it! I'm starting to think that the biggest challenge isn't language... but working with school faculty.
We find out where we are placed on Friday! I feel like a five year old at Christmas time. I hate saying it but...the only thing is that after Friday... there is essentially no more hope lol. Today I can still have the mentality that "I could end up anywhere!" Once Friday comes, I'll know where I'll be for the next two years... hopefully I will have a good site mate - or even just a site mate lol - it's just so helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off of. Oh man, we'll see... No matter what happens, I can't forget that anything can always happen :) It will just be nice to not be under so much of a watchful eye. Having every lesson plan critiqued and changed 25 times. It's just hard when everybody has to have an opinion about what you do or did or plan to do... I'm really looking forward to some freedom.

1 comment:

  1. Working with people usually provides the biggest barrier. I haven't read in a couple of days so I'm reading this post knowing that you've already received your assignment, but not knowing yet what it is because I haven't read that post.

    Can't wait to see where you are going!

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