and so it begins

When I came here, I thought I was going to prefer teaching very young learners. I told my school as much, but I asked to teach a bit of every age group and English level just to get the experience, and see if maybe something else turned out to be a better fit. This is the beauty of private schools, and mine in particular, the opportunity for flexibility and catering my classes towards what I want.

I had my first "class" yesterday, I tutored a high school senior for two hours. She is applying to universities at the end of this school year and would like to study English there, so she is coming to my school for additional study above and beyond her public school English classes. Since I am tutoring her, not working through a class with a book, I come up with all of the materials and focus on whatever she needs to get in to the university. I have her working with Judy Blume's "Are you there God? It's Me Margaret," which makes me probably happier than it should. We also worked through a news piece about July's haboobs. It's the little things!

I really enjoyed working with her though. She was very shy at first, but once she got more comfortable a lot of working with her is really just conversational. She is a very quick learner and tutoring her flows very easily. Maybe I will end up preferring this age...

My full class schedule for next week included all ages and levels of English, including my five hours this weekend with a group of business English learners from a local oil company (oil is the main industry in Songyuan). BUUUUUUT I have a big change coming. I will keep my working hours through this weekend here in Songyuan (another tutoring session, a level 2 Oral class and then my business English classes) and then Sunday night I will fly to Tianjin to teacher there. More on that to come!!!