Wednesday, March 12, 2008

?Como se dice DISASTER?

School started on Monday but I didn't have any classes until Tuesday so I sat in on a class to get an idea of how a "real" English class was run. Pretty smoothly, I thought, until my first one on Tuesday evening - - hence the disaster notice. The university I work for has several campuses that are specific to different majors and apparently I'm stuck in the "construction"/"engineering" one. Soooooo, my first class was full of 30-35 year old male chauvinistic pigs who quickly learned enough english to make comments about my ass and other unmentionables. . . I played dumb, but made a point to face them the rest of the hour, as hard as it was to write on the white board without turning around. Definitely a case of karma giving me a swift kick in the ass- - pun well intended- -after all my whining about deprivation of male attention since I got here (it doesn't help that all the women in my group sport double Ds). The 90 minute class was dismissed after 45 and I was off to a rough start, but fortunately the class immediately after clase de assholes was really fun and motivated. I've had three classes since and it's been a much more positive experience, although the amount of work involved in lesson planning was sorely underestimated. Such is my new life as a teacher. In the next couple of days I'm hoping to secure a Spanish class for myself so I can make some more Chileno friends and break out of my gringo bubble. . . not to mention get some ideas for teaching. It's amazing how quickly I lost the student perspective after so many years spent in school.

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