First Day of School

After much trepidation and preparation, today was the first day of school. Class started at 8:00 am, but the doors of the school don't open until 7:50 am. I blew in at about 7:55 am (Sarah and I took a slightly wrong turn en route) and wrote on the board, "Good morning, welcome to English class." I also wrote my name and Sarah's name.

I have 21 students, all undergraduates. With a couple of exceptions, all are engineering students, including explosives, civil, industrial, and electronic. There is one accounting major and one English major. Each class has a monitor, which is sort of vaguely like a head boy in the English private school system. Sometimes they are elected by the students and sometimes appointed by the teacher.

We had an election for the monitor. Seven people applied, we had a vote, and then the top two vote recipients had a run off. The English major won, 41-7. Sarah was the Supervisor of Elections. Unfortunately, we did the election last in the day, and I ran over about 7 minutes, which I think is unforgivable, particularly considering that the class is 3.5 hours long. I'll let them go early tomorrow, I swear.

We had lunch with a number of other teachers, who had received a number of questions from their students, including invitations to lunch, and offers to teach them to cook. So I now feel inferior, because my students have not offered to adopt me. As a group, they have good reading and writing skills, and more limited oral skills, which are, after all, about practice, practice, practice.

I feel fortunate to have this opportunity, but I am working very hard. I'm trying to hear what the students have to say, trying to keep focused on the lesson plan, trying to execute on the lesson plan. It was like a 3.5 hour legal hearing. Well, maybe not that bad. But it was tough.