Finally Friday

Oh boy - Friday at last! I am SO excited for this weekend. Not because I'm doing anything extra special, but I just can not face another day of work. Mr B just once again told me I could go early at 4.10 or 4.15, even though I came to work at 8am, so my finish time is actually 4.00. I guess I'll wait until 4.10 just to keep him happy. The bus doesn't come until 4.5 anyway, and it's cooler inside than out.

So I found a few jobs to apply for this afternoon and actually got a positive reply from one recruiter. He passed my info on to a kindergarten in Dongtan and seemed to think they'd be very keen to talk to me, so that's promising. However, I don't know anything about the job yet other than that it's kindergarten in Dongtan, so early days yet. I need to find out the wages and work hours - some hagwons (after school schools) pay awfully low for really high work hours and teaching hours. I'll accept slightly lower pay than what I'm on (but I won't tell them that!), but I'm not willing to teach more than 30 hours a week. Plus I want to find out if they'll swap my airfares for more paid vacation and if they'll agree to give me my vacation in blocks - I've heard of some schools giving their teachers random Wednesdays off with no warning and using up the paid vacation that way. That would suck - no real break, can't plan anything, and you don't even get a long weekend. So, I'm planning to be a bit picky this time around... definitely don't want to be puling my hair out for another year :)

Today I got to teach two classes by myself! It was so much fun! I totally forget how much I love teaching when I don't get to do it. In typical Mr B fashion..... well, lets start this at the beginning:

I got into work at 8am. School starts at 9, but the first English class isn't till second period, at around 10am. So, I've been at work for two hours, and so has Mr B. 5 minutes before class he comes and asks if I can please teach alone. I was like "Sure, what would you like me to cover?", and he just looks at me for ages in confusion and then is like "Oh, can you practice your open class lesson?". I said "Um, you only told me about it yesterday afternoon. I know I'm a fast lesson planner, but even I'm not that fast", which he obviously knew just by looking at him, but he thought he'd try anyway. So then he says "Well, just use the flash cards we used yesterday". Ok. For 45 minutes you want me to go in there with a bunch of 11 year olds, I now have 2 minutes to plan the lesson and all you've got for me is flash cards? Well, thank goodness I'm a little bit of awesome, because man did we have fun with those flashcards. 2 minutes with scribbled plans on the back of some scrap paper and we were revising body parts, learning illnesses, and even had a small test. I was impressed with myself.

Anyway, I keep coming across ads for my job while I'm job hunting. I know it's my job because of the location and start dates (they're out of synch with the public school system). The ad I came across today said that the school is ONLY looking for a female teacher and that because it was a private public school they wanted someone with either a teaching certification, a CELTA, or a degree in education. I'm just like "WHY?" Why do you want that? To look good and so the principal can boast to all his principal friends, I guess, but there is no effing way you need any of those qualifications to do this job. In fact, having those qualifications makes you almost certain to be thoroughly dissatisfied with this job. If you're insisting on hiring someone with teaching qualification, who has spent time, money, and effort to get them, and probably likes teaching as a result, don't hire them for a job where you never let them teach. It blows my mind. 

But, I suppose it does allow Mr B to randomly ask you to teach a class in 5 minutes time with no materials and no lesson plans and you can do it well and without panicking. Luckily, when I worked as teacher in NZ my boss actually identified this as a real skill of mine and used to give me those jobs on purpose because he knew I could handle them. Sadly, I didn't work for them long enough for him to be allowed to write me a reference letter saying that, but at least I know it's still true.

Ok, only one hour of work to go. Here's today's five things:

1) I still love teaching. This makes me happy. I also actually got to teach, which makes me doubly happy.

2) Only six weeks of this job left to go. That's not long :)

3) It's the weekend!

4) I did get to see Andy last night. We went and hung out in the coffee shop under my building and just talked. It was actually great.

5) Now it is time to browse amazing pictures of sea life on pinterest.

I mean, look at this amazing stuff!