Time flies when you are having fun! During my month of off school, I was keeping busy by traveling around Beijing and Hong Kong and attending our organizations annual conference in Thailand to gear up for another semester of teaching! My parents were able to come and visit me during this time and I was so thankful they made the trip to see me. Although the students had already gone home for the holiday prior to their arrival, it was great for my family to tour the school, and to meet my teammates and fellow Chinese teachers. They got to see a glimpse of my life here and experience Chinese culture!
This past Sunday night came with sounds of rolling suitcases and parents dropping off their children to begin a new semester. Thus far, things are going very smoothly…a little too smoothly. I was expecting my students to have a hard time transitioning back to speaking English since the majority of them don’t speak it at home, but they have jumped right back into the language. I was only away from China for a couple of weeks, and it was hard for me to come back and begin speaking Mandarin again, so I have been very impressed with them. From my teams experience last semester, our school often likes to change the schedule, often times at the last minute, but we have only had a couple of changes this week so we have been pleasantly surprised! It has definitely been great reconnecting with our Chinese co-teachers and students and I am excited to continue investing and building wonderful memories this semester!
One thing that challenged me from our conference was that “students do not see all the preparation you put into a lesson, they only see you for the class period you are teaching, so what are you putting more energy into?” Last semester I think I was doing great with the planning of every detail and being over prepared, but by the time the class period came to teach the lesson, I was exhausted. My goal this semester is to be more balanced in this and to be more conscious of my energy level and enthusiasm during my classes. I have already learned from last semester that I really don’t enjoy teaching EFL as much as content subjects to elementary students in the States, so this makes this goal more difficult, but I know this is what He has given me to do in this season, and I want to do it well. I want to be more balanced in life in general as well. I am seeing how being a first year teacher can be all-consuming if you choose for it to be, but already this week I am doing better- I have not brought anything home with me from my office to work on after school. (Ok, one class of grading but that is all!) Honestly, I feel a little lazy, but I know I will be a better teacher if I am balanced.
Our first weekend back into the semester has been one of much needed rest as I’m still adjusting, getting the swing of things. On Saturday morning I awoke to snow- it may not stick around for too long but I’m enjoying the beautiful view out my window!
