Friday update, mostly teaching

It's been something of a taxing week, teaching. One of my classes has a couple of students who are operating at emotional levels much younger than their chronological years, and it stirs everything up and pretty much brings the whole class (most of whom are wonderful) down to their level. I've been lucky enough so far in my ESL career to have had to deal with almost no behavioral problems, but I guess I have to learn sometime. It just didn't occur to me that I'd ever be having to keep students after class to give them a talking to, or even, especially, reprimanding them in front of the other students. (My public ire is reserved for instances of intolerance and cruelty toward the other students in the class.)

So yeah. I just wish all my students would respect each other, respect me, take responsibility for their own part in their education, and understand that every second of life doesn't have to be "fun." Oh, and not come to class drunk. That would be great.

I got up early this morning and baked a can of those cinnamon danishes with the orange icing, so I could bring my 8:00 beginners something warm and sweet. They're always complaining that they're hungry; half of them don't eat breakfast. The gesture and the danishes were well received; one student said it was a party, and another ran home to his apartment to get a 2-liter of peach Slice he had in the fridge. Aw.

In the next class (the difficult one) I was showing a travel program from the Food Network, as a listening exercise. I know from past experience that showing food before lunch makes students groan with hunger, so I brought cut-up pieces of soft fresh pita and a container of garlicky hummus for afterwards. After the week we had, I figured we all needed something fun and delicious to end with. Unfortunately, their 8:00 teacher had spontaneously decided to hold class at Denny's, so by the time my class rolled around, everyone was still stuffed. The snacks went virtually untouched. Sigh. Oh well.

It was a very pretty day, and although I was tired I figured I'd better take advantage of the sunshine, because for the past few weeks we've been having lovely Fridays followed by dreary, rainy weekends. In the afternoon I went walking by the creek on campus and saw lots of little wild flowers, a squirrel with only half a tail, and another squirrel being chased on the ground by a crow.

This weekend I have students' journals to grade, and if the weather is okay I'll probably do something with my container garden on the balcony. Last weekend I started a new compost bin with some of the worms from the first one.