Love From Brazil ღ

New year, new semester

This semester for me is a tad different than the last, as in I have HALF the amount of groups at work than last semester! Last semester I had four groups, I only have two groups now as for some reason the coordinator decided to take away a group I was initially going to get. I have a kids group in the morning and an adult group in the evening. The kids group isn’t bad, miles away from the little monsters I had last semester! There’s only one kid or two that have me raising my voice once or twice… okay maybe several times during the lesson! But hey, it’s a kids group, what do you expect right?! There’s always gotta be at least one hasn’t there?

Now, the adult group is okayyy, I mean adult groups can be really fun to teach when you’ve got a good group but this particular group is very quiet. My G O D how they’re quiet. So my new challenge this semester is the opposite of last; instead of trying to calm the students down I need to liven them up! And no, I did not ever find a way to calm down the hyper kids! The school did what they should have done in the first place which was splitting the group up.

As a result of having two groups I of course have a lot more time on my hands which I’m intending to use in order to get more private students/translation work and hopefully learn crochet! But I’m terrible with exploring new hobbies as I’ve become such a procrastinator since living here so we’ll see. Things I did in my free time when I lived in London were practicing music stuff (piano, guitar, etc..) and reading ooh and going to the gym. Since I’ve been here I’ve only continued reading. The whole procrastinator thing put me off buying a decent keyboard or guitar because I always have the ‘wait to see if Rod gets the visa’ comments floating in the back of my mind. And I do not think I will be at ease until we do see if Rod gets the visa or definitively decide where to stay. I know this attitude holds me back in a lot of ways but I just can’t help it! I’ll never forget the moment when I frantically read through the judge’s determination letter from the appeal and realised I was going to have to leave my home. Anyway, enough moaning about that. Fingers crossed 2012 will be THE year baby! Off to work now, hoping the rain will hold out until I get there and stop before the hubby picks me up on the motorbike!!

Roll on December!!

Sooo, it’s only the beginning of the new semester and I want December to be here like now!! ‘Why?’ You may ask, well this semester I have a particular group of kids who are absolutely NUTS. Seriously, the hour that I spend with them has got to be the loudest hour I experience throughout the whole week! NOTHING works to calm them down!

• Relaxing music does not work.
• Any music from the course book you play has them shouting along (no, not singing along).
• If you let them dance to the song some of them like to throw themselves on the floor and start spinning around.
• Calming games such as Chinese Whispers do not work!
• I’ve even tried to use an annoying sound as blackmail (to get them to be quite or else I’ll play the sound) but they just ‘noise’ along to the sound!!

I’m trying to put together some kind of team competition thing that encourages the children to want to demonstrate desirable behaviour. Last lesson one of the students said to me ‘Ahh tia (tia = aunty in Portuguese), it must be so nice when you get home after this class!’ LOL

I got to speak with the group’s previous teacher to ask her for tips and she told me of the trauma the group brought her which I had heard about from other colleagues before my lessons started with this group. On the first day of lessons I was chatting in the teachers’ room with a colleague who was telling me about how much the group’s previous teacher had suffered and I was looking out the window at the children shouting and running around the place knowing that was the group and thinking ‘oooo lucky meee.. NOT’

So in my chat with the previous teacher she basically told me the only way she managed to get through the lesson was teaching that lesson’s unit and having the children copy stuff so there would be no moment that they would have to wait for her to give out instructions. Quite understandable seeing as there is not one second of peace where you can even explain to them what they have to do!! Whenever they have to do an activity I eventually have to go round the class to explain to each student individually what they have to do. The lady at the tuck shop told me how she and the security guy sometimes saw the previous teacher crying after class!! Poor thing! Don’t think I can see myself crying at any point but maybe going mad??? So this semester other than planning my lessons I have to be researching techniques, activities… anything to calm down hyper active kids! Lord give me strength. I’m just hoping none of the coordinators observe any of these lessons!! My recent sitting in was NOT fun. I’ll leave that for another post, should be fun eh??!!