First Day of School!

Last night as I was putting the final touches on my lesson plans I had some definite pangs of "I don't want to work..." The end of vacation is always tough for me. I realize that the last three months of blissful exploring, frisbee, and genuine laziness are going to vanish before my eyes only to be replaced by a seemingly endless cycle of lesson planning and teaching. Its never a pretty picture. But I've realized that the outlook only bleak when I compare work to vacation. Now that I've got the first day under my belt and I'm in the work mindset things seem much brighter.

I'm teaching 4 classes here. I teach 12th grade math, science, and IT (all to the same 30 kids) and I teach English to 7th graders. I'm a little intimidated by my schedule because I'm teaching so many different subjects, but at the same time I think it's a pretty cool set up. I don't consider myself an expert on some of my subjects (note: I hated english class all through high school and continual to have residual hatred of the subject in general.) This will push me to learn more about each subject so I can serve as a better resource for my kids.

Anyways, let me tell you a little about the first day (which was mostly a blur). My PGA3 class (the seniors) are all mainland Chinese and seem like real good kids. Their understanding of written English is quite good, but they are intimidated by oral communication (understandably so.) Attempting to break down this oral language barrier is going to be one of my goals for this year. My EPP class (7th grade English) is full of Overseas kids from Taiwan and South Korea. They are INCREDIBLY shy and afraid to speak in class. It's going to be hard to draw them out of their shells, but I'm going to do my best...

In other news, this evening I arrived at frisbee and started warming up when a familiar form started walking towards me. As he got closer I recognized him as Michael Burrows - one of my friends from high school! I couldn't believe it! What are the chances that we'd meet up (for the first time since I graduated high school) at a pickup frisbee game in Shanghai! It turns out that he's been in China for 8 months already and plans to stay for almost 2 more years. People are just coming out of the woodwork it seems. It was great to catch up with an old high school friend!

- Jon