Abby and I just finished our first semester. Finally. The month of January has been rough, but we made it through. Some of the issues that came up this month:
1) Never knowing when the semester would end. Our lovely school district is all about planning things last minute, so we didn't know how many classes we had left to prepare for the final, nor did we have a specific date to look forward to or buy plane tickets for.
2) Four straight weeks of finals review. That means that the kids had to endure only their core classes (math, Chinese, and English) for eight periods everyday. That also meant that we were stuck teaching kids who were beginning to loathe school with a passion. Although we tried to play fun review games, mine often ended with angry, competitive boys handing in their materials and refusing to play anymore, since they decided my rules weren't fair. Also, the kids became very creative about the methods with which they distracted my classes. My favorite was when Paul hid a broken table leg in his desk and started banging it on whatever he could find.
