Start of Class

Tuesday, January 2nd

Tuesday was a very crazy and busy day. I started with getting to Pagoda by subway, which takes me an hour. It is fairly easy because I only need to transfer subway trains once and it is a short walk from the station. After arriving, I meet with a manager to get settled, get a locker, copier access log-in, and try to print out my papers. It was very hectic since many of the students are still trying to register and all of the teachers are trying to get prepared for their classes. January is winter break for all of the students, so this month is the busiest month when more students will enroll in class. I also found out that each month only has 20 class periods. I didn't hear about that in training, but I had my suspicions because February is shorter and how do you teach the same amount of information. I had a challenge trying to figure out if I would have to make a test or if there would be a standardized test.

My first class was from 12pm-2pm. I taught Power Training, which is a little more advanced than Basic Training, but still a low-intermediate level class. I have 6 students in the course, which I am excited because it will be easier to interact, but still allow for group work. The class went fairly well. My second class is at 5pm-7pm. This class had 11 students. The class was very shy and nervous, so I had some difficulties with getting them to respond. I hope that the class will get over the shock as class continues. My last class of the day is 7-9pm. With this time, I had my first major problem with two other teachers and it eventually hit the administrative level. Two teachers asked me to switch classes, but there excuse for switching seemed very poor. I didn't know what to do and I was only given time between classes (10 min) to decide what to do. I knew that this would prove to be a challenge because I would need roster changes and other things. I eventually found out that the other teachers didn't get approval to swap, but I ended up changing any way. My last class started with only 1 student which was really nice. To finish the day, I hopped back on the subway for an hour.