We're in the middle of midterm week here at ICA! For the last couple of weeks, the teachers have been preparing for this week, spending hours creating tests and review guides and review activities and whatnot. It's been pretty busy and stressful due to recent events, but everyone got here and it's going well!
Now that midterm week is upon us, everyone is very busy. The school day's schedule is completely different than normal, and we're not complaining. The first test starts an hour after the normal school day so that means we get at least another 30 minutes of sleep! The first test starts at 9am and goes until 11am. The students have free time to be outside or study for their afternoon test which is taken from 1-3pm. The office assigned us proctoring duty, so each teacher is proctoring four to five tests this week. We aren't proctoring one of our own tests so we can be available while the students are taking our test to answer questions.
Basically we stare at the wall, or the students, or some posters, or the ceiling for two hours. The school structures it as close to an SAT test session as possible, which means the students aren't allowed to speak once they get into the classroom and the proctors aren't allowed to do anything except watch the students and monitor their tests.
Overall, it's not that bad. It's a lot of time with my own thoughts, which is okay. It gives me time to think about how I want to format my classes for next semester, plans for the weekend, my parents' visit, or even just see how much of the Les Miserables soundtrack I can get through from memory ("Little Fall of Rain").
Tomorrow, the students will take their foreign language tests and language arts tests so by 3pm tomorrow I will have 16 new tests to grade. Because of that, I finished grading my 23 literature tests today that were taken on Monday. I'm going over to coworkers' apartment tomorrow night to have a grading "party" for tomorrow's midterms. It's all very exciting.
In other news, the headmaster approached me about adding a contemporary dance class into the curriculum here at ICA and he wants me to teach the class! Schedule-wise, it will replace the ESL class I've been teaching but it's very exciting because it's the first of its kind here at ICA. He says he will offer it to 9th graders and up but we'll see how many students sign up for it and if it will even fit into their schedules. I've been doing a lot of research about dance curriculum trying to understand as much about its structure and delivery as I can. I'm going to add goals relating to the dance class' curriculum into my PDP so I will be getting plenty of feedback on its progress from the administration, which I'm very excited about, too.
In 16 days, I'm going to be on vacation AGAIN! This time, I'm going to Bali with some wonderful coworkers! It's going to be a week of relaxing in the sun, getting nice and tan and plenty of sleep. My goal is to finish my book, which I read a lot of in Malaysia so that shouldn't be a problem in Bali!
Current countdown numbers:
16 days until Bali
80 days until mom and dad touchdown in Taipei
136 days until graduation!
I can't believe it's already January.
No comments:
Post a Comment