At the risk of making you jealous: my weekend has begun, hooray!

When I arrived at school for lunch today, Joe said:'The students will have a test tomorrow afternoon, so you don't have to teach. You can take a break'. My initial reaction was 'yippee!'. Teaching this week was extremely exhausting. Because of the warm weather? Because of the tired students? I don't know, but what I do know is that I was really looking forward to the weekend. And now my weekend has started one day earlier than exzpected! At the same time, it made me wonder: is this the Chinese way of saying I'm not a good teacher....?

Last week, I started with 7 students on Monday, but on Wednesday, there were only 5 left. This week, I started with 6 students and today, only 4 showed up. Chinese students will stay away from class if they don't like it. Last week, the students complained about my methods of teaching. The Chinese love to complain (even more than the Dutch!), but in particular Chinese adult students.... Ooof! They never express their complaints directly to me, so I always have to guess what they think. Chinese people are afraid to lose face, so they're very difficult to read.

On Monday after class, Joe gave me a complete lesson plan for the next day. She told me the school wanted to try a new approach. All I had to do was check the English used in the lesson plan, then she would correct it and give it back to me the next day. She'd also make copies for the students. The big advantage of this way of working is that it saves me a lot of time. I don't have to prepare my classes in the morning anymore. A big disavantage is that I don't have to do much at all. My role as a teacher has become extremely passive. I spent the last three afternoons counting down the hours! I can tell you that 2,5 hours felt a lot longer than 150 minutes...

Tomorrow, there'll be a short meeting to discuss this 'new approach'. I was used as a guinea pig; none of the other teachers have used this method so far. I'm curious to hear the outcome of this meeting. Meanwhile, I'll have a meeting with myself as well: should I stay or should I go? Teaching English at New Start doesn't seem to make me very happy. Or is it teaching English in Yangshuo? Teaching English in general? Hmm, this could be a long meeting!

Happy Halloween and have a great weekend!