I am exhausted!!! These past 3 days have been some of the most stressful days of my life. LCI started on Tuesday, we have all new students and a different system for our classes, and we have absolutely no time to prepare. It was about 5:45 on Friday night when Sue, our supervisor, told us that we had to put together a detail lesson plan for the month and weeks of March for the 3 sets of classes we teach. It may not sound life a lot, but trust me – it's a HUGE amount of work! We had a 3-day weekend, but with abrupt notice required us to come in on Monday and spend hours running around trying to figure out what books we are supposed to use, where those books are, and what to do with the books. We had absolutely zero instruction and were expected to just figure it out. We don't have all of the books yet, so each tea her is required to makes copies of our daily lesson for each student. That's 1 copy machine for 12 teachers who have about 45 students each! By the time I was able to use the copy machine, it had some mysterious paper jam over and over and over again, so I couldn't make the copies I needed for class the next day. A few of us went into school early to use the copy machine, but again, that one copy machine for all of us to use in the short amount of time we had before class. I ended up just playing games and singing songs with my students all morning- which I didn't hate, In my later classes, I have my youngest students who are learning English for the first time. They speak zero English and don't have English names, so I was able to name them after some of my friends from home – Joe, Michael, Monica, Evan, Megan, Whitney, Lisa.- I didn't name them after my close friends from WSU because Katie already had that covered. ( Ariel - sorry I couldn't name one after you, you’re name is too hard for them to pronounce) I spent all of my time with these classes teaching them their name and how to say “my name is”. I found myself being really frustrated that I couldn't communicate with any of them, tell them to stop talking, or explain what to do with the paper I just passed out. I never let it show, of course, but I was definitely a learning/growing experience! Today I noticed that my patience level was much higher.. I’m interested to see how high my patience level is when I come home next year. I doubt I’ll ever be told I talk too fast ever again. I ‘ve enjoyed my time in the classroom these past 2 days, but it’s absolutely exhausting!!!
Not only did we have to come in on our day off (no pay, yet again), and come in 45 minutes early, but we all ended up staying at the school until 9pm yesterday and 7:30 today so that we could have time to make our lesson plans, post them onto the website, make a billion copies of our book, and I still had to work on putting my classroom together. We have ridiculous amounts of work to do with no time. I was growing increasingly frustrated today when I was rushing around all day, knowing that I am not even close to being caught up and I'm not getting a dime for all of the extra time and energy I have been putting in. All of the teachers are really frustrated with the amount of work we have to do as teachers at LCI, while still getting paid the same amount as we did at Brown English Language School.
By the time we get done with work everyday, I come home, get ready for bed and fall asleep. I don't have the energy to do anything else, just go to bed and dread waking up for another tiring day at LCI. Sorry if this seems like a little vent session, but I guess if you are reading my blog you want to know what is going on in my life- now you know that during the week I really don't have one. If I had to sum up my life in a sentence, it would be- I play hard, to work harder. But that's life for most, isn’t it? Hopefully my dinner at Chicken Galbi, a delicious restaurant in Dongtan, with my friends will make up for this arduous workweek!
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