School Policy

Recap

So much has happened since I last wrote. I'll just recap the whole thing.

First of all, we went to Barcelona. It was 43 sudents and five teachers. Everyone spoke Dutch, which was sort of a pain in the neck. Of course I spoke English the whole time so that I could maintain my reputation as the English teacher who doesn't speak Dutch. On the first day, I was sort of a mess, keeping to myself, not knowing who to talk to or what to talk about. I finally lightened up. It turned out to be a good trip and I got several bits of feedback that the students found me approachable and friendly.

The latest big thing was Exam Week. That was sort of a problem because they take the tests and they want the results back immediately. Problem was that I had literally 75 to grade and it was horribly exhausting reading page after page of horrible grammar. I could only do five before I was doubting my ability to put three words together.

Then there was the grading. Henri told me to grade very hard, but there's "Henri-hard" and "Philip-hard" and those are two completely different things. Henri takes off a point for anything. I am (was) still sort of impressed with their level of English, so that affected my grading. Suffice it to say that my averages were much higher than Henri's. It was sort of a mess, but I don't feel that bad about it any more. He should have told me.

Now the new period has started. This is my third period of the year. (Three periods per semester.) Strange system here. And then today I was suddenly told that one of my classes was cancelled because they were all in a big test. So I had an hour free. Then I misread my schedule and I saw that (after a half hour break) I was free for another hour. Lots of free time today - time to get caught up on blogging? I read and organized last free period. Now I'm blogging.

That's about it. School is going well. Some exciting news on another front, but I'll get to that later.

posted by Philip @ 1:11 PM