Alexceptional
A game: How much tea will it take to forget the interview I bombed today?
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42 oz and countiiiiiiiiingggggggggggggggg
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What a day
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Okay story time. It might help me feel better
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IT WAS ROUGH
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48 hours ago I was told I would be demo'ing a lesson for a job I applied for a month ago
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I was given the textbook pages, told it would be a reading lesson and asked a question in regards to what the regular teacher meant by "historical artifacts" when she explained the theme was "exploring history through historical artifacts"
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So a 60 min. class was divided between me and the regular teacher, which I did not know until last night lol
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She took the first 20 min. to introduce the topic, I took 35 min to get through the reading parts or the main aspects of the lesson. 5 min. at the end was given to her for assigning homework
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I asked as many questions as I could yesterday, what grade are the students, are they familiar with the vocabulary in the text, are there workbook pages, what is the expected focus for production, are they meant to analyze, discuss.... so on
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Most questions didn't get an answer but I knew they were 4th graders and I knew the teacher wanted them to read and then analyze with discussion
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In 35 min.
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The reading was 10 textbook sized pages
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Phil did a timed run of reading it and it took him 8 min.
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Yeah so we managed to get them to do a summary activity where they read in smaller chunks then a full read through and that's all the time we had
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A lot could've been better 
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But wow, it was like another planet
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It was surreal, like the school said they did the American curriculum but a lot of schools will say that. But no, that was pretty on point. And it really threw me off
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The students also had a clear routine with their teacher and the instructions I gave were 10x harder because it wasn't their norm
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I had a lesson planned for something a lot different, that was more to what I've seen and am used to which is a very Chinese classroom. This wasn't it lol
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OH AND
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TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE
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MY SHOES BROKE ON MY 90 min commute there
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The bottoms just completely fell off and when one fell off I tied a stretchy band I magically had in my bag around the bottom and onto my ankle and it ... worked
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The campus is enormous
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I went to the main gate, then was told visitors have to go to the gate on the opposite side of campus
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On my way there my other shoe fell apart
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So I was now running later than I wanted to with 2 messed up shoes
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I got in, apologized in excess and a kind soul found me double-sided tape
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Which also worked long enough to do the lesson and get me home so WELL DONE double-sided tape, today's Actual Shonen Hero.
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I am so mentally exhausted
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And for nothing, too
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I sent my recruiter a sad text of defeat and bless his heart, he said he'd rally to my defense but I don't think it'll work. The lesson was terribad and I knew it even as it went on
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But it's very hard to stop and tell a room of 10 year olds JK let's try it totally different
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I did do that at one point and then another point. But each time I think I made it worse
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The only thing I could fathom was There goes my lesson plan. I didn't plan for these kids. I planned for Chinese kids in a Chinese classroom and that's not what this was at all
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I wanna apologize to the kids for messing up their 3rd day of school but that's a bit too much maybe 
فك يو
wow, this sounds like a failure on the school's part to prepare you! the questions you asked that you never got an answer to could have waylaid a lot of that
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Yeah, Phil said the same. But it's pretty typical to get very little info before a demo lesson here. I don't really know why
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When Phil did a demo for the job he now has, they didn't even tell him what the equipment was like and had expected a powerpoint, but he didn't even know he needed his laptop