The following post will be 60% rant, 20% trivia, 10% drama, and 10% train of thought. Apologies.
- So the manager bought some pens that look like carrots, pineapples, bananas, and whatnot for the prizes kids can 'buy' with their stamps. Well, about four of those pens disappeared on Tuesday, and as I was working overtime again I saw the manager looking over the security camera footage. Damn, turned out that I had checked the thief in question's worksheet that day, and it was after she took those pens. She's seven and can't remember what 'will' means. Even the manager wasn't expecting her to be the one. Anyway, I heard the manager call the boss before I went home, so I thought some action would be taken. Well, apparently nope, because a)it's re-registration period and if she's exposed she won't continue coming to the academy b)the parents probably won't accept that their child did something like that c)it'll cause bad word-of-mouth among the parents and d)it's re-registration period. Just a notice posted above the prizes that there is a security camera watching, and everything is to be as normal. The mother did make an appointment with the boss (I assumed she had realized what her daughter had done, now I'm not too sure), but I still have no idea if she was taught her lesson or not. I mean, I did a stupid thing when I was seven not even realizing I was doing something wrong, but I was caught, reprimanded, and got my lesson after crying tears of shame and guilt (maman later chided me for not just asking her to buy me one of those bead strings, I cut out about 3 cm out of it and it was approx. 3 dollars for 60 cm). She came today smiling as usual, and both the manager and the boss acted as nothing had happened and called her "sweetie" and "cute as a button" and so on. I couldn't look her straight in the eyes and keep my smile on my face, so I just avoided eye contact when she came over to me to get her worksheet checked. Re-registration period sucks.
- Another reason re-registration period sucks: Progress Reports. It's just the collection of the kids' worksheets and an 'evaluation note' on top, but since every sheet has to be marked with the date and name, signed, and arranged in chronological order, it's time-consuming work. I was told by the manager to always mark the date and names during every lesson when I started working (I do it religiously) and for every kid I teach I always stack their worksheets in order in their folder, but (sigh) guess who doesn't. My gripes with Ms. Natasha can come later, checking whether those stacks of paper are in order or not isn't my biggest issue with the PRs. It's the fact that on the manual for writing those evaluation notes, there's this: "Rating Speaking - If the whole lesson can be carried out in English, mark 'average'. If not, mark 'improvement needed'. Same for Listening." Like, why have the 'Excellent-Good-Average-Improvement Needed-Poor' scale if you're only going to use two? I needed a moment when I first marked Min 'average', and still I die a bit inside every time I mark very good listeners and speakers of the language 'average'. My notebook is filled with my analysis of the kids and their reading skills, listening comprehension abilities, size of vocabulary, syntax and structure, usage and preciseness of grammar, summarization skills, level of confidence, and whether they actually have an opinion and if so whether they can back it up with evidence (along with their tastes in books, candy, and animals, interesting episodes and/or quotes from the lesson, and other potentially useful information). Re-registration so sucks.
- There are too many kids with the same or similar names. In an English context, let's say that among the girls there is an Allie, two Ellies, an Elsie, an Ella, two Emmas, a Gemma, a Bella, an Alice, an Elise, and an Alexis. There's also a boy Alexis, and among the boys there's an Alex, an Alan, an Adam, two Liams, an Ian, an Ethan, a Nathan, and a Mason. So, these kind of things happen:
1. the manager says to me "Could you do Emma's lesson?" and I'm like "Um, which one?" and the manager has to check because she's confused too now
2. I'm told to check Alexis's worksheet, I go over to her desk, she's not even started on it yet, I smack my forehead because oh wait the boy Alexis is also here too and there he is chatting with Alex
3. a parent comes and looks for her girl, I look at Allie, Elsie, and Alice and spiral down into a mass of confusion because the name I heard could be any one of them
4. Liam Smith, Liam Jones, and Ian Jones (unrelated) are all present and I'm a)supposed to check up on Liam (whichever one it is) and b)one Jones boy spooked me and I said "Whoa, Mr. Liam, I nearly had an heart attack" and I freak out because if it's actually Ian he's going to be mad at me
5. I call out to Nathan with a sore throat and Mason's like "Who me?" or I call Gemma and both Emmas, Bella, Ella, and one of the Ellies look up but not the actual Gemma
6. Elise's little sister Alyssa also comes, the manager says "Here Alice" by mistake, and Alice, sitting in front of me, looks at the manager confused
and so on.
- Introducing Sean (which is actually quite similar-sounding to his Korean name, his mother had good sense), a bouncy rubber ball of an 8-year-old. He's actually pretty smart, but to know that you have to actually make him sit still and concentrate on the given topic. How is that possible, you may ask, he is eight years old and cannot stick to a single topic without going off about explosions or robots or exploding robots. Well, I found out through that a certain brand of jelly (it's kinda like Sour Patch Kids) works magic on him;set a timer and promise if he gets the lesson done in time he's going to get his packet of jelly, voilà maximum concentration. How did I find this out? I had bought a box of that jelly to give to my favoured students when I got Sean for the first time. In no time I got an aching headache, and in desperation tried the race against the clock. He wasn't interested in Mentos (which the academy provides) so I (with a deep sigh) got out the jelly. He looked suspicious at first, I told him to try one (if it wasn't to his taste I was to have the rest), he did and (à la Mary Poppins)
snap he's all for it. I thought it was just a lucky break, but then he comes again later in the week, points at the computer screen (I use an online timer), and goes off "We're doing it again, right? If I finish in time, I get the jelly?" Now, if he starts going off-topic I just sigh and say "Hmm, Mr. Sean, I guess you don't want your jelly today", he fervently repeats his burning desire for the jelly and I can get him right back on track.
Last week, the manager asked me how I manage Sean so well, and I told her the secret. She was about to order candy for the kids, so she bought the magic jelly
laugh
as well and gave me two boxes, one original soda flavoured and one mixed fruit flavoured. He came on Monday, and I gave him the mixed fruit flavoured one for a change. I asked him later whether he liked it, he's all sparkly-eyed when he says "This has five flavours. Five. So I really, really like this." He still digs the original too (sigh of relief), still as he goes out to his waiting mother he holds the empty wrapper dearly in his hand. His mother threw it away when she saw it was empty, and Sean went off "Why did you throw that away?!!" loud and clear, ringing across the hallway
- Ms. Natasha's son apparently got the flu, so she's coming late on Friday. That is a very understandable situation, but still that doesn't change the fact that I had to do the PRs all by myself. And the preparations for tomorrow. I clocked out an hour late, hungry and with a headache. But maybe it was for the better, there's less fuss with the kids when I do the preparations (sigh) I have no idea why a Russian major would teach English, like, if she was a French, German, or Spanish major it would've been understandable, but articles are one of the most difficult thing to teach the kids (Korean doesn't have them) and her second language also not having articles doesn't help (deep sigh) Just, she told a kid that he's "doing very well but needs to sound more like a natural English speaker with his pronunciation", and a)I have no idea what her image of a 'natural English pronunciation' is, since even if just counting the places where English is the first language there are a whole bunch of accents that sound wildly different b)whatever it is, she doesn't have that 'natural' pronunciation and c)how the everloving (bleep) is pronunciation his biggest issue when he speaks like "Jack and Annie is going to tree house to go originally time"
His pronunciation is actually passable, sure he doesn't roll his r's or place accents on the right syllable but you can tell what kind of words he is using. What he needs first and foremost is syntax, but well I guess asking for a person who doesn't have stable syntax to recognize that is illogical of me (deep, deep sigh)
. And now, I calculate everything in 'how many competitions I could go for' value 
:
when I do tell them they need to fix said issues and c)the lower-level kids to be waiting for their lessons when her shift is over (she leaves at 5:30, I leave at 7). This results in the higher-level kids getting confused over learning proper grammar, the lower-level kids rushing over to me because they've been waiting for some time, and my wits being scattered all over the place because I have to deal with everything at once. The manager said she's going to try and evenly sort the kids, but she did tell me that I'm going to need some fast thinking and good timing to not let Ms. Natasha get all the higher-level students. I suck at playing mind games... (deep sigh)
