When I last left you, I had received the phone call that wrecked my week off. I have set my phone to play Good Day Sunshine whenever work phones because the irony amuses me. I had a private class with one of my more rabid students from the summer who is trying to squeeze me of every drop of knowledge I possess, but he cannot understand why just copying my essays and dropping in his examples doesn't work. This is not math, so you cannot substitute one formula for another. I knew we were starting regular classes on Saturday (a brilliant plan concocted by someone at the head office in Vancouver who apparently wants the teachers to hate him/her). We were supposed to have a teachers meeting and get materials on Friday afternoon. Did we? No, we did not. On Thursday after my class I asked Hee Soo if we had the SAT materials for Saturday yet and he replied, no we did not and he asked what I thought we should do. I though we should teach lesson 9 as we had finished with lesson 8 during bootcamp and that would be a logical progression. I then told him to choose a practice test that I had already done from my files so I would not have to prep anything. At that point they still had not decided how they were going to fill my Saturday mornings but they promised to phone me on Friday and let me know. So Friday I putter around the house waiting for the phone to ring. I was desperate to have a nap in the afternoon but knew that the phone would ring as soon as I fell asleep so up I stayed. Finally at 5:30 the phone rang and I got the bad news. Saturday's schedule was as follows:
9:00-1:00 TOEFL
1:00-2:30 SAT Writing
2:30-5:30 SAT 2100 Class Reading and Writing
Notice what is missing here? Perhaps lunch? Andrew thinks they had figured the schedule out by noon and were haggling over who was going to tell me for the rest of the afternoon. I know that during TOEFL class they write a 30 minute in class essay every day so I can leave the room and eat then so its not too bad.
Then Saturday arrived and I picked up the materials. TOEFL was missing the CD's we use for speaking and listening and nobody knew where they had gone. I know I went out and bought special sleeves to go into the teacher's binder so that the teachers knew where said cds were at all times but now suddenly they are gone (sleeves and all) so I have to create a back up plan for the 4 hour class. I hastily pull out another first class set of lessons from the TOEFL stuff I have been developing. Crisis 1 solved. I look at my SAT materials...the test that was sent is brand new so I have not read it, let alone checked it over for mistakes so that's on my to do list while I'm teaching TOEFL this morning because 50% of my afternoon classes involve going over the test. Then I look at my lesson 9 materials which should be a lesson on Punctuation...nope SOMEBODY has changed lesson 9 to the materials from Lesson 13 which are about Voice. So I scramble and print out my notes for that lesson and pray that the new lesson 9 is the same as my Lesson 13 notes. My Toefl students did a lot of read to yourselves, answer the questions and then we will discuss them so that I had enough time to check over the SAT test which had 4 mistakes in the answer key. I plugged through the day which is not bad while I'm teaching because I'm too busy to feel exhausted. But once I'm done, I'm DONE. There are no more brain cells active and everything is irritating. Andrew loves me on Saturday evenings. He just places food on the table in front of me and backs away quietly so as not to lose an appendage.
On Sunday we had plans to go sailing with Amy and James. The weather looked perfect and we met Amy and her parents at her house and then drove to Scarborough to the Yacht club. After some prepping of lunch by James and Amy we were on our way. We were happy to be out on the water but the swells were pretty high and so the sailing was a little rough. Amy was below for a while and came back looking green. Andrew was silent but afterwards said that he was feeling a little seasick as did Uncle Brad. So we headed back after an hour. We had hoped to be able to see some of the CNE's airshow but only one set of planes flew over. Back on land we had a great lunch of subs heated on the barbecue and vegetables and cheese and crackers. We finished with my chocolate chip cookies, which everyone enjoyed. After lunch James, Dianne and Brad retired to the boat for a nap while Andrew, Amy and I played board games and chatted. It was a beautiful afternoon and very relaxing. A perfect antidote to my Saturday.
Today we are just being at home, perhaps doing laundry if I feel particularly motivated. Andrew starts classes tomorrow. His lovely wife bought him notebooks, a box of his favorite pens and a new MP3 player (his first), filled it with all the industrial music he owns for his long subway/bus rides to campus. I bought a Sansa and am really impressed with it. It is small but feels weighty in the hand so you don't feel like you will crush it if you press the buttons too hard. the sound quality is great. So if anyone wants an inexpensive little player I would endorse this one.
Okay I'm off to the balcony to read the newspaper with my pot of tea. I hope everyone has had a nice long weekend.
M
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