Well, the summer courses are officially over, and the schedule has changed dramatically as a result. Since primary school is held during the day, EF is now only open for classes in the late afternoon and evening. Except for Saturday and Sunday, when classes are still held all day. In addition, all the teachers now have two days off per week. My days off are now Tuesday and Thursday so my weekly trip to the bookworm has been pushed back from Monday to Tuesday,(even though I still have Monday morning off.) I prefer to come relax at the bookworm without having to worry about leaving at a certain point to prepare for school.
Classes have been shuffled around as a result of the change in off days. I'm no longer teaching V.I.P.s or my first small stars class, which is disappointing for both the students and myself. The small stars kids seem to like me and have been one of the more cooperative groups that I've taught so far. The younger small stars classes continue to be a challenge. They do not have the attention span for lessons, and spend most of the time playing around with each other. According to the other teachers, most of the youngest level classes are a bit of a wash when it comes to English instruction. It's more a matter of socializing the children with their peers. Which makes sense, because many of them are barely able to speak Chinese yet, so trying to teach them English as well seems a bit hopeless.
I've started teaching a few High Fliers classes, which have been the most stress free so far. The kids are old enough to know a bit of English and young enough yet to not be overtly contemptuous about having to be there, unlike some of my Trailblazers students. Only three of the eight TB students actually attended class on Sunday. Being the last day of summer break, I'm not surprised. So rather than delve too far into the book work and have to play catch-up with the missing students, we spent the first hour on book material and spent the second hour watching a movie.
Only working during the evenings and weekends will afford me more time to myself. I've downloaded the Rosetta Stone program, so I can start learning a bit of Chinese in my free time. Philip recommends a program called Fluenz, which is supposed to be good as well, with more practical vocabulary and phrase work. During my time between classes, I've been working almost non-stop on my 3D projects. I spoke briefly to another artist on Second life about collaborating on mesh dinosaur avatars. But it seems that he prefers to work alone. (He enjoys sculpting dinosaurs too much to have me producing sculpts for him.) We might end up working together later on producing accessories like saddles or armor for his dinosaurs. While he beat me to the punch as far as creating dinosaurs avatars, no one has produced any quality dragon avatars yet. So I might still be able to corner the market and produce mesh dragons for distribution.
Here are a few pictures of some of my recent projects:
Classes have been shuffled around as a result of the change in off days. I'm no longer teaching V.I.P.s or my first small stars class, which is disappointing for both the students and myself. The small stars kids seem to like me and have been one of the more cooperative groups that I've taught so far. The younger small stars classes continue to be a challenge. They do not have the attention span for lessons, and spend most of the time playing around with each other. According to the other teachers, most of the youngest level classes are a bit of a wash when it comes to English instruction. It's more a matter of socializing the children with their peers. Which makes sense, because many of them are barely able to speak Chinese yet, so trying to teach them English as well seems a bit hopeless.
I've started teaching a few High Fliers classes, which have been the most stress free so far. The kids are old enough to know a bit of English and young enough yet to not be overtly contemptuous about having to be there, unlike some of my Trailblazers students. Only three of the eight TB students actually attended class on Sunday. Being the last day of summer break, I'm not surprised. So rather than delve too far into the book work and have to play catch-up with the missing students, we spent the first hour on book material and spent the second hour watching a movie.
Only working during the evenings and weekends will afford me more time to myself. I've downloaded the Rosetta Stone program, so I can start learning a bit of Chinese in my free time. Philip recommends a program called Fluenz, which is supposed to be good as well, with more practical vocabulary and phrase work. During my time between classes, I've been working almost non-stop on my 3D projects. I spoke briefly to another artist on Second life about collaborating on mesh dinosaur avatars. But it seems that he prefers to work alone. (He enjoys sculpting dinosaurs too much to have me producing sculpts for him.) We might end up working together later on producing accessories like saddles or armor for his dinosaurs. While he beat me to the punch as far as creating dinosaurs avatars, no one has produced any quality dragon avatars yet. So I might still be able to corner the market and produce mesh dragons for distribution.
Here are a few pictures of some of my recent projects: