I thought that I would be a lot more nervous than I was today going into the classroom. I think having Jessica as a cooperating teacher is helping calm my nerves cause she’s young and we are very similar! I bought the students some pencils that say Canada on them and some Soccer Canada stickers (thanks Heather!!) They loved them! We played a game to get to know each other. They had to stand up and say their name, where they are from, and then three interesting facts about them. Most of the kids speak very good English! I would say only one of them is struggling with English. It’s funny how you can tell the personality of a child even by something as simple as them standing up in front of the class and saying three interesting facts about themselves. Some rushed right up there and spoke loudly and were silly, and others slowly walked up, spoke softly, and only said their name and where they were from. I never knew this before, but the students at the International School aren’t allowed to have a Chinese passport, so a lot of them have Russian, Canadian, Malaysian, Korean and Indonesian passports, although they only lived in most of these places for 2 months after they were born just to get the passport, and both their parents are Chinese. After each student went up I stood in front of the class and it was a question panel. I think they asked me question after question for 25 minutes. These questions ranged from “where did you go to school in Grade 5” to “Miss R, if you were in a zombie apocalypse, who is the person you would want with you and what weapon would you use?” (Yes they actually asked me that!) It was a lot of fun, and it definitely helped them to get to know me. They know that my name is Miss Russell and some of them call me that, but a lot call me Miss R, which totally sounds like “mister” when they say it!
As the day went along I got to know each student more and more. It is funny to hear their “English” names, and it is funny to me that we do that. If I moved to China, I would not be given a Chinese name, so I wonder why we change these children’s names just to make it easier for us, and make it more Westernized. I don’t know if I agree with this. Here is a list of the student’s names in my class. You will definitely laugh at one of them:
Dennis
Grace
Jessica
Melanie
Selena
Lawrence
Lisa
Kev
Goldie
Aileen
BMW – yes his name is actually BMW his mother gave him that name and it just stuck, and for some reason is doesn’t feel weird at all to call him that. He asked me if I owned a car. When I said, “yes, I own a VW” he said “WHY NOT A BMW?” hahahaha!
Joanne
Kevin
Dalan (pronounced Doll-in)
Linda
Christine
Rachel
Vincent
Oscar
Sharia
That was all from memory! Pretty good for the first day eh?
Some of them are quite funny names, but they fit each one of them! Dennis is Korean and he is quite the character, he made me laugh all day! Jessica said she tries not to laugh too much because she knows he is just being silly, but you can’t help but laugh at him sometimes!
The kids go to school from 8:30-3 and then they have an activity from 3-3:30, and then head home. Their breaks are just like the breaks at any NB school. At dinner time me and Kate tried to eat in the teachers cafeteria (although we were warned not to) and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it. It saves me money to eat there, but I can’t see it happening again! Hahaha
After a great day at school, Kate and me headed to a district called “Futain”. We went with a few other teachers and took the metro there. Right now it doesn’t seem to hard to figure out the metro, which is good cause I think we will be taking it a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment