After a week of experiencing full load, I was relieved that it was not as hard as I imagined. Day 2 was a bit hectic because I barely had any rest in between classes. However, I enjoy seeing my students every day.

Today my Humanities 8 students finished their essays. It would be exciting for me to read their thoughts. Hopefully, they successfully applied the OREO into their writing. Here I come, a stack of essays! 🙂 Rubric in left hand, and red pen in right. I am ready to go.

My ESL level 3 class got a bit better. Students were engaged with the discussion. I asked them to tell me the differences and similarities between schools in their hometowns and Vancouver. The grade 8s were stomping on the ground or moving close to me to get me pick them. It was a little bit overwhelming. I was not used to such pressure. It was hard to get the grade 8s calm down; at the same time, it was difficult to get the quieter students from other grades to speak up. I guess it would take me some time to manage the class better. I must say I need to be more aware of how the students behave while conducting the class activity. There were two grade 8 boys who were so excited that they started to sit on the desk to get my attention. It was not too dangerous, but it would not be that acceptable. Nevertheless, it was a good discussion. Students opened up to the class to talk about their own experiences, such as how they got made fun of after they made a mistake when they spoke. It was unfortunate. I shared about my experience too. I guess we could relate to one another. 🙂  It was nice to have students so willingly and openly to talk about their thoughts.

My ESL1/2 students are so adorable. Two of them offered snacks to me during class. One was a chicken spring roll, and another was a handful of chips. Good stuff! 🙂 I decided to set up some class rules with them, so they would know what I expected in class. Being a bilingual teacher could be a blessing and a curse. Once students discovered that I could speak in Chinese, they would want to converse in Chinese. Therefore, I needed to come up with a rule that everyone should speak in English except for a corner in the classroom. I hope it will work. Experiment time! I had some one-on-one time with level 1 students today. I sat with them to talk about their tasks. However, since I was so focused on helping the level 1s, I forgot about the 2s. The 2s were not on task, and I thought they would. I may have to come up with a better plan to circulate around the class to get them focus.