Slowly getting to the weekend...

It's still cold, freezing cold actually. Ok, I know.... It's not as cold as in the north of Spain where the temperatures have gone below 10 degrees C below 0, and it's definitely not as cold as in Stockholm during Christmas, but it's still way too cold for me. Here in Spain most houses don't have central heating so it's COOOOLD indoors. One funny thing about living in the Mediterranean area - during winter we PUT ON more clothes when we get indoors than when we go outdoors....

It rained for a while today, and for once that made me happy, because when it rains at least it's not as cold. But the rain didn´t last for long and the temperatures went down again, but at least it was quite nice when I went out for a while.

It's Thursday tomorrow. I only have 2 classes and they don't require much preparation, so I'll spend the morning tomorrow finishing some board games I've printed out but haven't finished yet. On Friday I only have one class and it's late in the evening, so I'm thinking about going to the library to study in the morning. I really need to get back to studying, because time flies... I thought I'd be almost done by now and nooo, I'm far from even halfway through.... :-(

I also need to think about ways to get more students, because I don't earn enough to make it on my own yet. This month things are especially tough, so for the rest of the months we can't buy anything at all, not even any more food (except milk and bread of course, my kids are still growing). If I only could get 3 more students before the end of month things would work out perfectly... Oh well, things will work out, one way or another... It's just a matter of faith...

In case you're as cold as I am, listen to this cumbia and dance your cold away...

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Teaching, I love it!

As most of you know I'm an unoficial teacher. I don't have a formal degree as a teacher, but I've been working as a teacher for many, many years. Since I don't have a degree I'm not allowed to work at a public nor private school, so I've decided to work at home, giving private classes. That's not really legal either, since I'm oficially unemployed, but what can I do? I need to work and I need to make money and teaching is what I do best. I don't want to lose my time doing stupid courses to learn how to talk on the phone or use a computer, I already know that. I want to make a living for me and my kids and that's all. Besides, I know that my students learn a lot coming to classes and that will make them better prepared for the future, so I'll keep on doing my classes until I get a "real job".

To me, teaching is a way of living and I guess I'm a bit fanatic about it sometimes. Poor my kids! *lol* But since I don't have any hobbies or a wild social life I spend a lot of time working... I read as much as I can and I make board games and stuff for my classes. I always try to learn better ways to teach my students the things they need to learn to become fluent in English, or at least get to a reasonable level. Unfortunately English is taught horribly here in Spain. Most teachers don't even have a decent pronunciation... So there's no wonder people here keep on saying "jappibirtay" and "jappijaloin"...

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It's Monday!

Oh no, where did last week go?

We're going away for Christmas on Thursday and I haven't even started packing yet. :-( Now I've only 3 days to do the washing up, packing, cleaning, picking up, defrosting the freezer, cook and eat (!) all the food that's in there... I also need to finish preparing the classes for the first week in January, take the books to the library, take my computer to the shop... I don't really know how I'll manage to do all that but at least I know I'm going to try and I'm going to do it the FLY Lady way.

It's 11.20 AM and I'm still in my PJ's (shame on me!), but so far I've done a load of laundry, I've washed quite a few items by hand, I've done some picking up... Now I'm off to have a cup of coffee while I read through some texts I might use for class tomorrow. I need to prepare 3 classes with a Christmas theme - HELP! I don´t really know what to do yet.... Maybe Christmas cards, I think my students can enjoy that and if I look what I've already got at home it won't cost me much...

Time to get back to my chores....

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Sunday already

This week has been really crazy. Monday and Wednesday were holidays so school was out on Tuesday as well. I had 5 days officially off work. It was GREAT! I really needed that. I did work some, but definitely not as much as I normally do.

Unfortunatelly the rain was pouring down most of the time and money was, as always, a big issue, so we didn't do anything special. But at least we had some time off and we got some rest.

Friday was horrible.... Normally I teach 90 minutes on Friday, it's my quiet day, but due to the holidays I did 2 more clases, so in the end I ended up teaching 5 hours. I was really exhausted when the last student finally left...

Now it's Sunday and I'm preparing stuff for next week. Only 2 more weeks before Christmas. Hooray!!!

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It's raining cats and dogs

Oh my, winter is definitely here now. It's raining cats and dogs and it's freezing cold. I don't feel like working at all, I just want to snuggle up on the sofa, watching a good movie, sipping on a cup of tea and having some white chocolate biscuits. Unfortunately, that's not what my life looks like at the moment. It's more like - You better get back to work now lady, you hear me? Or you'll be sorry tonight when your students come and you haven't prepared anything. Oh well, dreaming comes cheap there days, just about the only thing that it is now, isn't it?

It's 1.30 PM and I've already had my first 2 hours for the week. Now I'm "free" until 5 P.M. when my "little girl" comes. She's 9 and has severe learning difficulties due to not breaking completely the reading code. She still guesses a lot so in the end she doesn't really know what she's reading, and that makes her too slow to keep up with the rest of the class. I wish I could get a magical wand and help her, but unfortunatelly I'm not a good fairy so we just have to read and read and read... Hopefullly she'll get is someday soon, so we can catch up on everything she's missing now. She comes twice a week so I can help her with her homework (in Spanish).

Mondays are a tough day for me, because I teach 3 classes. Between 7 and 8 P.M. I teach English to an 11-year old boy and to my DS11. I help them with their homework, explain grammar and teach them vocabulary. It really is a relaxed class but it's still a class and I still need to prepare stuff.

Well well, time to get back to work!

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So little time, so much to do

Lately I'be been working like 12 - 15 hours a day. Since I lost my job and oficially became unemployed again, I've been working more than ever. It's funny how life is sometimes, isn't it?

At first I was terrified, wondering how we would survive without money, since I'm not entitled to any kind of benefits. Then I got angry... Losing my job was not my fault. I'm a great teacher! It wasn't my fault that the owners of the school where I worked didn't know how to make business. So I decided to try my luck as a private teacher...

I began October with only 2 students, then I had 4, then 5... At the moment I have 8 and I hope to have at least 15 by the end of January. I'm still not making ends meet but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that things are improving and hopefully I will be independent financially within a few months.

My students are mostly kids, between 7 and 15 years of age, but this week I'll start teaching adults as well. Such a wide age range means that I had to make several groups and each group needs a whole different type of teaching. My 7-years old loves to play and his attention span only lasts for like 5 minutes. My 15-years old wants to learn as much as possible in as little time as possible. That means that I spend a lot of time planning my so far 13 hours of class a week. I also need to make my own materials since I try to make my classes different from what they do at school. Yes, I do work way too much right now, I know, but honestly I'm also having a ball! I just love what I do now and I'm really excited about being my own boss. I think I'm becoming a workaholic... But I'm happy...

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Wednesday already

The weeks are really flying by... It's Wednesday already, it's 1 PM and I'm working at home. My goal for today is to finish at least half the book of Lengua (Spanish) for the 5th grade. What I do is to copy the grammar parts and look for excercises that work those areas.

I don't really teach the normal way, because my job is to help the kids with their homework and explain those things they didn't understand in class. I really love my job, and I don't mind at all explaining 13829475023 times in a year what a noun is. *lol* I have a lot of patience with my kids and I see myself as the teacher's helping hand. Thanks to my job, the kids understand better in school and that makes the teachers' job a lot easier. I know a lot of people look down on us private teachers because they think that the parents pay us to do their kids' homework and it's not at all like that.

Besides preparing the Lengua-classes for the coming year I need to find fun ways to teach English vocabulary. Most of my kids at work have problems with English, because unfortunatelly it's still a subject most schools don't pay much attention to. I wish I could change that and make the kids really enjoy the English classes. So if anyone reading this have links to sites where I can find games in English, please leave me a comment. ;-)

Oh well, it's time to get back to work! My own kids took their bikes and went for a ride so I'd better use this hour or so to do some serious work. *lol*

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Need some help with rhymes

I'm preparing a new English course. Those of you who have been readong my blog for a while already know that I'm a teacher at a small private school and among other things I teach English. Well, tomorrow I start up a new group and today I have to prepare the coming clases. Everything went just great and then all of a sudden I got kind of blocked. :-(

I just can't figure out these rhymes. I know, they are fairly basic, but somehow I just got stuck... Please please please, help me with this:

It lives in the forest and rhymes with near.
It's sneaky and rhymes with socks.
It lives in the forest and rhymes with hair.

I hope someone reads this and can help me out.... I feel really stupid, I should know this....


*** UPDATE*** Just got help from a friend. Thanks TT! The answers are deer, fox and bear. Duuuuuh! Just how stupid can you get? Think I need a cup of STROOOONG tea....

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It's Friday, hooray!!!

Oh boy, am I tired or what...? I can't remeber being this tired for a long long time. I know that if I lie down right now I'm going to fall asleep even before my head hits the pillow. It's almos 6 PM so I still have some hours to go before I can go to sleep.

It's been a tough week. I've had soooo much work, preparing classes and studying French and Maths. And the weather has been awful, it's been raining most of the time and that really gets on my nerves. I still have lots and lots of things to do this weekend, but every little thing I do is a step closer to feeling fully prepared for my job and that will be soo cool.

Well well, I'd better get going before I fall asleep with my head on the computor. I'll go to the public library with my DS1. We'll be back in an hour or so...

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French, my nightmare

I've had a really rough time these past days due to me studying French. I have realized that I've forgotten so much. Well, I didn't touch it for over 20 years so I guess it's normal that I've forgotten about most of it. Or maybe I just got too blocked...

I studied French for 6 years. First 3 years at school and I LOVED it!!! I studied day and night and really wanted to learn to speak it well. I even had some French speaking pen pals. Then I started Secondary School and we got a new teacher, an old man who must have been a military in his youth or something. The first thing he told us the first day of class what that we were all stupid and not able to pronounce the French sounds as we should, so he was feeling sick. He also told us that due to our horrible pronunciation we were not to speak French in class. If we wanted to learn how to speak French we should go to France, because in class we were to study grammar and nothing else. And that's what we did.... We spent 3 years studying French verbs... I ended up so fed up with French grammar that I decided that I would never ever speak a word of French in my whole life!!! And I haven't, until recently...

I really need to get rid of that mental block I have with French. I guess French isn't such a horrible language after all. But right now I'm feeling quite ill because I'm actually teaching a language without knowing it... I do not enjoy my classes right now... But I need the money... And somehow I know this is the only way I'll get back to French, because I hate going to class and not knowing what I'm doing. I'm sure I wont have any problems with French next year. I just feel sorry for my students this year, because I'm not sure I'm helping them or making things worse...

I did learn a good thing from that teacher though... I definitely know what kind of teacher I do NOT want to become!!!! When I feel sad because I feel I'm not a good enough teacher I think about him and think "Well, at least I'm doing better than him, because he made me hate the subject he was supposed to teach us".

Well, it's time to get back to my studies for a while. A bientôt, tout le mond! See you soon!

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