An exciting week of teaching has come to a close. I must admit that preparing for lessons and teaching was much easier than I thought it would be. Well, perhaps I should rephrase. Lesson prep is difficult and I do get nervous when we begin lessons but I always enjoy working with the students so after a while it stops feeling like work and I just enjoy my time teaching.
I taught three classes this week. My first class was with the grannies on Monday and I got to teach them about one of my favorite subjects... TEA! Since their English is fairly advanced we were able to hold a wonderful discussion on everything relating to tea including where it is grown, blends vs. single origin, cultural differences, and a bit of the history on the origins of Earl Grey. They are very opinionated so getting them to speak isn't very difficult and we were able to have a wonderful discussion on the inadequate state of the tea industry in Argentina.
My second class was a one to one class with an advanced student where I also got to teach about tea across cultures. The student knew a remarkable amount about tea and different tea ceremonies throughout the world and we had a wonderful conversation on the versatility of tea to bridge cultural differences.
My third class was on fears and phobias and, to tell the truth, I was surprised the class went as well as it did especially with everything that seemed off that day. I gave the class on Thursday. That morning I had woken up at 3:30 and was unable to fall back asleep so I just stayed up and did work. Torrential rains that day also messed with public transit so many of my students arrived late, missing the warmer and intro to the topic. While I was teaching a toxic cloud drifted over the city and gave off a smell reminiscent of synthetic popcorn which was rather distracting to say the least. For more info on the flooding and toxic clouds click here.
On Friday Michelle, our teacher, prepared a nice surprise for several of us since three of us had our birthdays during the course (Nov. 20, Dec. 5, 7).
Jessica, Kyle (ME!), Simon. The birthday students!
Birthday students and Kristina!
Friday was a chill day. We had a creative writing workshop and then discussed cultural differences that we noticed after being in Argentina for a time. Another successful week out of the way.
Kyle
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