Work Weekend

I have had a funny, but busy work weekend! Most of them usually are. I've been trying to promote my Tree Planting program for next weekend in all my classes and the front desk let me know that parents are interested. The customer service staff have all worked hard to send text messages to all the parents about it.

I covered a small star class this morning and it is pretty fun to watch the students and parents reaction to a substitute teacher. The parents are all so nervous that their normal teacher is not there, but the children all have their own unique reactions. One boy, "wild Bill" as Ryan warned me, immediately smacked my bum as he walked in. There was an immediate discussion in both Chinese and English after that... "Wild Bill" solemnly promised to be good and then promptly wrestled the next kid that walked in to the ground! After that, the class went pretty smoothly!

My favorite class this weekend was my oldest class. We started a new course today and spent the first hour arranging a class contract. One of the students in that class told me that she started this week at an International school and met a black man for the first time in her life. He is her math teacher. She wanted to know what was the most polite way of talking about his skin color. We had a long discussion and we talked about using person first language instead of just jumping to the skin color. It was a good conversation. Quite a jump from the small stars curriculum!

Tonight, I went with Cindy to meet her friend at a Cantonese restaurant. I'm slowly starting to be able to make distinctions of different types of food, but just barely. I'm guessing that Chinese food, much like Mexican food, tastes best in it's country of origin!