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It was naive of me to think that only three would cry. If only it had just been three. So much crying (and pooping).
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Big Week
I am teaching 22 classes this week and moving. It’s a little overwhelming. Hopefully things go well!
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Work Update
Things are progressing nicely on the job front. I’m working part-time with two teaching companies. They seek out businesses that need English lessons, coordinate the schedule, and do the billing. I show up and teach.
My teaching schedule is steadily growing and I’m up to 16 hours a week. That doesn’t sound like much, but it actually keeps me pretty busy. My goal was 22-25 hours a week, but I’m feeling a little nervous that that schedule will be pretty difficult to maintain.
Yesterday morning I spent a couple hours lesson planning and then I went to an internet café and printed my handouts for class. Then, I taught for 90 minutes at a business in Palermo, rushed to the Microcentro to teach an hour class, and then came straight back to Palermo to teach another 90 minute class. By the end of the third class, I was exhausted. And I had earned a whole $35 USD!
I know this will get easier. Since I’m a new teacher, it takes me a long time to lesson plan right now. And I still haven’t figured the best routes to get to and from class, so that adds some stress. But still! This is hard!
The actual teaching part is awesome though. My students are fun, and I get to laugh and listen to them try to pronounce words like mountains. “Moontins. Mawtawns? Mownteens?” Hilarious. To be fair, I apparently can’t pronounce araoz, and they laughed at me too.
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An update.
The lesson actually went really well! Shockingly so, in fact. We worked on the difference between sympathy and empathy, guilty and ashamed, and other emotion words. The only major hiccup was when someone asked me about the word cynical. By the end of my explanation and the ensuing discussion, I´m pretty sure I don´t even know what cynical means anymore.
But other than that it was good! Now I just need to come up with some more topics for class. Any ideas?
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English Teaching Attempt #4
Begins in 5 minutes. Today’s topic is emotional intelligence. I was supposed to have just advanced students, but the other teacher is ill, so now I have everyone! Let’s see how this goes….
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Teaching is hard….
I taught my second practice English class today and boy was it rough. I talked way too fast (surprise!) and also let the converstation get super sidetracked. For example, my lesson was on internet terms, and during an explanation of “spam”, we got way off onto canned processed meat, and is it good or bad, and is it real meat, and is it dog food? I think at the end, half the class thought it was internet food for animals. Oops.
So that was unfortunate. But now I am done for the day and about to head out for wine with classmates in Buenos Aires, so life’s not too bad!
