...and then I found five euros!
Yesterday was an odd day, I have to admit. Things were good, but also kind of annoying. The teacher that I work with most was just in one of her moods. I guess she gets them more and more now. She's nice enough much of the time. But she's at the very end of her time teaching, and it's getting more and more obvious. Not that she's lazy about it, but she just has her way of doing things and it's too late to change the system. Anyway, she snapped at about everyone possible over the course of the day and basically grumbled the rest of the time. There's this wrong and that wrong. It's basically what I've been annoyed about in German people for a long time, times twelve. This isn't right, that isn't good enough, why do things have to change, things were so much better before the reunification, why can't I have my own room/stuff/laptop?, and on and on it goes. For whatever reason, though, I can communicate with her despite all that and we get along quite well.
Anyway, I went shopping yesterday, got a whole lot of food, so I can eat like a human again. I hadn't had a chance to go grocery shopping for more than a week, since I didn't really have a weekend. I mean, I had sunday, but that sure doesn't count, since nothing was open except the kiosk, where I got my 4-week TV guide. And then I decided to make myself a salad. There hadn't been any dressing at the store, so I decided to be rustic and make dressing by mixing vinegar and olive oil. Well, I guess I got the propotions all wrong because it was the second most acidic salad I've ever had (the first being three years ago, also in Germany, also the last time I tried such a foolish thing as making salad dressing this way). So I burned my mouth a little bit, it is surely unpleasant, but I don't think anyone's noticing the little welts on my lips...
Anyway, today started out that one of the other teachers is organising a Klassenfahrt, class trip, and I guess the other teacher had to bow out of helping out. So she was desperate and my teacher suggested that I could go along and this teacher (the one who I'd visited last weekend, actually) was quite pleased with this solution. So, pending the 'ok' of the principal, I could well be going to Italy for a week in October with some students for a nice price.
So that set a nice tone for today. My classes were fine. In the 8th grade, a class of 6 girls, they were writing little essays about the USA. I get along with two of them especially well, because they are very hard working and interested to learn new things. (they also helped me out of a jam yesterday: I was walking across the playground and a couple of my students were playing basketball. They said 'Hey Ben, these guys wanted to meet you' and over came two little kids. I asked which grade they're in and it was 3rd grade, and it was immediately clear to me that my older students had just pawned off the annoying little kids on me. Anyway, the topic of the conversation was 'are you REALLY a teacher?' and I said, yes, of course. And they didn't believe a word of it. So I looked around to find someone to prove me right, all the while realizing how silly it is to justify myself to 9 year olds. After showing them my drivers license didn't work ('Hey, it says that he's 84 years old!!!') I turned to the building and there were these two girls sitting in the 2nd floor window and said to ask them. At first they decided to be mean and say 'no, he's a pupil too' but finally they relented. That didn't work really either, so I got a teacher to tell them. Then I went to tai chi.) Anyway, they were writing some amazing sentences and coming up with some really good ideas, which is really great to see.
This afternoon, my teacher and I went into town and met up with a guy from LISA, which is connected to the Education Ministry and chatted for awhile. The guy is British, so we could speak a lot in English and he's very smart indeed. He showed us some interesting things, like this test that they'd tried out on some classes and he showed us a graph of how each of the questions varied. For example, it would show how many percent of the students got a question right comparing one school with a more general sized group (the state or city or something) and when both those numbers were low, then the question was bad. And then he showed us the questions and we guessed what was wrong with it. It was fun. After lunch, he gave me a general outline of a verbal comprehension test and I was to tape it. So I wrote down some notes and away I went. I'm not gonna post the actual task here, because it may be used for the 6th graders' class tests in March. But it was very interesting, as I was not to actually write out what I was going to say, but to have some points to hit and thus make it more natural. I thought it was gonna be a big pain in the neck to do, but actually it was pretty easy. When I was finished, both he and my teacher said that I am very good at this. I think doing theater in high school, and various speech groups, has given me a bit of an idea how it works. By no means am I profi-level, but good enough for their purposes, I guess. I think they'll use me again, which is fine, because I enjoyed doing it. A little improv here or there, in the classroom or out, doesn't hurt.
And then, to top things off, I went to the 'mall' and saw a couple of my fav students, bought a black dress shirt for the Schulball and found the specialty tea place. Man, I oughta just go to bed now before something goes bad!
Anyway, I went shopping yesterday, got a whole lot of food, so I can eat like a human again. I hadn't had a chance to go grocery shopping for more than a week, since I didn't really have a weekend. I mean, I had sunday, but that sure doesn't count, since nothing was open except the kiosk, where I got my 4-week TV guide. And then I decided to make myself a salad. There hadn't been any dressing at the store, so I decided to be rustic and make dressing by mixing vinegar and olive oil. Well, I guess I got the propotions all wrong because it was the second most acidic salad I've ever had (the first being three years ago, also in Germany, also the last time I tried such a foolish thing as making salad dressing this way). So I burned my mouth a little bit, it is surely unpleasant, but I don't think anyone's noticing the little welts on my lips...
Anyway, today started out that one of the other teachers is organising a Klassenfahrt, class trip, and I guess the other teacher had to bow out of helping out. So she was desperate and my teacher suggested that I could go along and this teacher (the one who I'd visited last weekend, actually) was quite pleased with this solution. So, pending the 'ok' of the principal, I could well be going to Italy for a week in October with some students for a nice price.
So that set a nice tone for today. My classes were fine. In the 8th grade, a class of 6 girls, they were writing little essays about the USA. I get along with two of them especially well, because they are very hard working and interested to learn new things. (they also helped me out of a jam yesterday: I was walking across the playground and a couple of my students were playing basketball. They said 'Hey Ben, these guys wanted to meet you' and over came two little kids. I asked which grade they're in and it was 3rd grade, and it was immediately clear to me that my older students had just pawned off the annoying little kids on me. Anyway, the topic of the conversation was 'are you REALLY a teacher?' and I said, yes, of course. And they didn't believe a word of it. So I looked around to find someone to prove me right, all the while realizing how silly it is to justify myself to 9 year olds. After showing them my drivers license didn't work ('Hey, it says that he's 84 years old!!!') I turned to the building and there were these two girls sitting in the 2nd floor window and said to ask them. At first they decided to be mean and say 'no, he's a pupil too' but finally they relented. That didn't work really either, so I got a teacher to tell them. Then I went to tai chi.) Anyway, they were writing some amazing sentences and coming up with some really good ideas, which is really great to see.
This afternoon, my teacher and I went into town and met up with a guy from LISA, which is connected to the Education Ministry and chatted for awhile. The guy is British, so we could speak a lot in English and he's very smart indeed. He showed us some interesting things, like this test that they'd tried out on some classes and he showed us a graph of how each of the questions varied. For example, it would show how many percent of the students got a question right comparing one school with a more general sized group (the state or city or something) and when both those numbers were low, then the question was bad. And then he showed us the questions and we guessed what was wrong with it. It was fun. After lunch, he gave me a general outline of a verbal comprehension test and I was to tape it. So I wrote down some notes and away I went. I'm not gonna post the actual task here, because it may be used for the 6th graders' class tests in March. But it was very interesting, as I was not to actually write out what I was going to say, but to have some points to hit and thus make it more natural. I thought it was gonna be a big pain in the neck to do, but actually it was pretty easy. When I was finished, both he and my teacher said that I am very good at this. I think doing theater in high school, and various speech groups, has given me a bit of an idea how it works. By no means am I profi-level, but good enough for their purposes, I guess. I think they'll use me again, which is fine, because I enjoyed doing it. A little improv here or there, in the classroom or out, doesn't hurt.
And then, to top things off, I went to the 'mall' and saw a couple of my fav students, bought a black dress shirt for the Schulball and found the specialty tea place. Man, I oughta just go to bed now before something goes bad!