A Day in the Life of Mark.....Part 1

I finished my first week of English teaching school and it was easily the hardest week of my life. Not only was adjusting to the reality of how hard it was all going to be, but our little dog Liu Ce was having some health issues and it added a lot of stress. I thought the best way to present how the week went was to present one day this past week from beginning to end.

The alarm goes off at 5.30am and I am lucky if I have had 5 hours of sleep. It is a very long and stressful day ahead. Though school does not start until 8.30am, there is a lot to do before. Michael or I need to take Liu Ce to the park which involves about an hour to carry her to the park, get her to do her business amongst the thousands of people exersizing, walking and dancing at the park. At 6.00am it is already 90 degrees with 95% humidity. A walk to the park is the equivalent to 30 minutes of cardio in a gym.

The rest of the pre-morning activity involved bathing, eating, preparing Liu Ce, reviewing lesson plans, homework and trying to breath or stretch to stay calm. We get into our professional clothes, white t-shirt and carry our bags and dress shirt for the 15 minutes, very sweaty and very hot walk to school. It is at 90degrees or higher at this point. We are normally quiet on our walk with all the school day swimming in our head.

The school day last from 8.30 - 6.00pm and is filled with madness for first half hour preparing documents, images, assignments, lesson prep before we need to teach or start our courses. The equipment is slow, old and I must remind myself it is not 1985. The first half of the day is discussing our lesson teaching plans followed by teacher training. Lunch is often filled with work to prepare and finalize to teach our students. We started teaching actual students on our second day!!! It was frightening never having experience doing this. If we are not teaching, we are evaluating in back of class either students or the teachers. There may also be assignments you are also trying to sneak in when and where you can. The classroom has too many students for a room that is way too small. At times the airconditioner is not affective and it adds to your stress and exhaustion. The teaching in concept seems easy, but knowing that you are responsible and all eyes are on you with evaluators is truly frightening and will take time to ease into. Our students are around 19 and though they know the rules and stucture of English they have little to no speaking experience and understanding them is very difficult. Most of them are girls and they are also very, very shy. One of the most important parts is to make a connection, a trust and make it all fun, energetic as well as educational......in 45 minutes.