Dear Diary,
Today was my birthday and I had the first English at the school as a substitute teacher. I was really excited last night that I couldn’t sleep and I spent the whole afternoon preparing for the lesson. I even went to school an hour earlier this morning…However, it turned out to be a chaos, a terrible mess.
At the beginning of the lesson, I delivered a newspaper passage to them and asked them to do a news report afterwards. About ten minutes after the lesson began, I heard someone snore. When I looked around, I saw a boy snoring and sleeping soundly while reading newspaper passage. He fell asleep. I quickly knocked on his table and asked him questions about the pros and cons of building the third runway mentioned in the news. Sam was shocked and surprised. He looked at me with his mouth opened wide. I quickly realized that he didn’t read the newspaper for even one time and just slept the 10 mins before. He explained he was playing video games for the whole night and felt extremely exhausted. I warned him with anger and arranged a temporary seat next to my teaching desk so that I can keep him active and concentrated.
10 mins later, while I was teaching a passage from Longman Elect, I suddenly heard May moan and screamed. The people around cheered for them and clapped their hands loudly. I quickly shouted, ‘Silence!’ I saw Kelvin was pulling May’s ponytail at Kelvin in anger and told him to write a letter of 300 words to let him reflect on his behavior. I also warned the whole class that pulling others’ ponytail was an impolite and disturbing behavior. I asked Kelvin to have lunch with me this afternoon so that I could understand the reason of him pulling May’s ponytail and let him think about the consequences before doing a thing.
During the ERS period 10 minutes later, when I was walking around to see if the people were reading and doing tasks attentively. Suddenly, I noticed the spillage of coca cola around Alisha’s desk. When I walked to Alisha’s table, she wasn’t fast enough to hide her food and I found that she was eating behind a book. I quickly pounded her table and warned her not to have meals in the classroom during lessons as it will increase the workload of the janitor. I warned her if she ate again during lesson, I would send her to the disciplinary office to see Ms Au Yeung. I also told her to eat more in breakfast so that she wouldn’t feel hungry easily.
At the end of the lesson, I heard a ringtone of a phone. Kelly was using phone secretly and watched videos but forgetting to mute her phone. I quickly scolded him and gave her extra homework and sent her to detention as phones are not allowed at school. I also warned him not to bring his phone again as he violated the school rule.
It was really out of my expectation for the first lesson I was having today. I cried after school today and felt was very depressed. However, I would try my best to make them become concentrated again. I would not give up although they were angry. I hope their attitude and behavior would improve with my teaching. I hope they’ll learn to respect and be active in class I hope they’ll be nice next lesson.
Bye,
Jason