January 16, 2017
11:00 pm
Beijing, China
Once again, it has been way too long since I have posted a blog. I’ve been a little bogged down by work over the past few days, so I’m exhausted! This past week was an odd week, so my work schedule was crazy. Let me explain. The way EF works is that we provide two hours of instruction a week for all classes. Some classes meet one hour a day two days a week (1hr/d classes), while others meet two hours a day one day a week (2hr/d classes). The only exceptions to that are our “supernovas,” which are all-day Small Star classes. In our center, we only have two that run all day on Mondays and are taught by Dawn and Juanita.
All of our courses (except one High Flyer course) are taught by two teachers. The teachers teach the same class on different days. If the class is a 1hr/d class, I teach my students one day every week and my co-teacher teaches them the other day every week. If the class is a 2hr/d class, I teach my students one day every other week, with my co-teacher teaching them at the same time on my off weeks. Does that make sense? Let me give you an example. I have a Small Star Blue (3-year-olds) that I teach for an hour at 4:30 on Friday evenings. My co-teacher, May, teaches the same class for one hour at 4:30 on Monday evenings. We both see the kids every week, just on different days. I also have a Small Star Blue that I teach for two hours at 10:00 on Sunday mornings. My co-teacher, also May, teaches them for two hours at 10:00 on Sunday mornings. So, I see the students on odd weeks, while May sees them on even weeks. To determine odd and even weeks, EF simply counts the weeks in the year. So, last week (starting on Monday) was the third week of 2017, therefore it was an odd week. This week (starting today) is the fourth week of 2017, therefore it is an even week.
Because there are some classes that I only see every other week, my schedule looks a lot different on an odd week than it does on an even week. Usually, our 1 hour/day classes are taught on weekdays and our 2 hour/day classes are taught on the weekends. There are a few 1 hour/day classes that are taught at 8:45am on weekends (like my Small Star A that I teach every Saturday) and a single 2 hour/day High Flyer course that is taught on Friday evenings (this is the High Flyer class that only has one teacher). Therefore, everyone’s schedules during weekdays stay the same, while their weekends vary. So, this is the schedule I had last week:
And here is the schedule I have this week:
Can you see any differences? Classes have blue bars and office time has yellow bars. (The weird teal one is a “new” class. One of my classes just graduated and is moving up to a new level.) As you can imagine, my odd weeks are a lot busier than my even weeks. So this past week was very busy with planning and teaching. I also had to attend extra training to prepare for Winter Course, which I will explain at a later date. On top of all that, I had two Open Doors, where parents come in to watch a class, two classes with assessments to give and grade, and three classes that needed Progress Reports completed.
Progress Reports are sort of like grade cards on steroids. Using our knowledge of the students’ behavior, language abilities, and test grades, teachers are expected to write a report on how each student is doing in class and what they need to work on in order to improve. Additionally, we must give an action plan stating what parents, the student, and teachers can do to help with the student’s improvement. Each teacher takes half of the students, often those who one teacher knows better than the other. If you know the students well, this shouldn’t take an extremely long time. Unfortunately, all of the classes that I needed to do Progress Reports for are brand new. I barely know the kids. It’s especially hard with my High Flyer course because there are 16 students in the class. I’ve only had them twice. I barely know half of the kids’ names, let alone remember how well they can speak. As a result, writing Progress Reports is a pretty daunting task for me.
With all of the tasks I needed to complete, my weekend was extremely long. I ended up staying after work until almost 10pm both nights to finish things. I still tried to complete a few small tasks when I got home, but there’s not much office work you can do once you leave the center. Overall, I feel exhausted. I just want to sleep for the next 24 hours–which I may actually do since I’m off work tomorrow.
Goodnight, all!
Kristen
