what makes my job hard

What makes my job hard is that I plan and teach 2 lessons on Monday which are both for mixed level groups, so I plan 2 lessons for each lesson. The first group is one with almost illiterate Bangladeshi ladies together with Upper Intermediates who want to take exams at Levels 1 and 2. So there is a lot of work in teaching them. I drive for 25 minutes breaking the speed limit in order to get to the next venue. The second group is the mums who come for the creche, and get a free 2 hour lesson once a week. They absolutely love it and are great students, but they are a large class and mixed levels (14 students between Pre-intermediate and Upper intermediate/Advanced); they take a lot of organising and the paperwork for them is absolutely irrelevant but has to be done in case we are inspected. And it is all worthwhile because I particularly enjoy that class, especially when even the shy ones open up and talk all about their experiences of childbirth (I have one man too, who takes his day off on Monday especially to come to the class, and he has to hear all about that and in return tells us about horrific accidents at work.) They all want grammar and vocabulary and are particularly keen on homework.

I sometimes feel rather happy after this has gone well, and go to work at college to do the registers, answer emails and think about lessons further on in the week. In the evening I do yoga. On Tuesday I have to be early at the college to get a parking space and I teach in the morning and in the afternoon. My class is made up of unemployed people, who are sent by the Jobcentre, but in spite of this they are usually co-operative students. There is only one who really seems to be wasting our time deliberately, but one is wasting our time accidentally, one has an addiction problem and is unreliable, one has a youth-related problem and seldom attends, and one is a full-time carer with children who is often called away. So they do have all kinds of problems but I teach them as well as I can and try to get some rigour into them. But I have them for 4 hours (used to be 5 hours twice a week) and I make it as interesting as I can. they also need some employability taught every week, which falls to me, and some of them are taking exams, and that's difficult to organise. Also new ones arrive all the time. We had 6 more in the last 2 weeks. But when it all goes well it does give me such a high! The unfortunate thing is that the teaching takes a lot of adrenaline and afterwards I am very tired. After 2 days of adrenaline my eyes are smarting and I am soooo tired, but I also teach from 9 am until 9 pm on Weds. Then I have a day off and then I teach on Friday a.m. - a different place. Then I have to start planning for the next Monday and Tuesday. The planning takes a long time usually because of the mixed levels.

 The unfortunate thing is that when I am observed the assessor always comes to the evening class, which is maddening, I am too tired for it really, but I have got something quite good planned for my next observation. Which was meant to be taking place tomorrow and now it isn't, so I have to plan something else, but I am frankly toooooo tiiiiiiired. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Teaching again

It all went pretty well last week but I am worried about Maybury, where I have a class of only 7, and only 3 of them are level 2, and one of the Level 2's is going to struggle horribly with the reading and writing exams. Bellfields, my supposedly disadvantaged class of mums with children in the creche, was popular and fun, and well-attended, I got a good buzz from that class, and I have them again tomorrow. Routes into Work was a small class - a group really - but we had a funny bunch, with M from Turkey who is young, handsome and cheeky, and S from Iran who is older and has strayed from dementia towers without quite knowing why, and 2 ladies from Iran and from Spain who have no particular problems, but must be wondering what on earth they have got into. Luckily I have a volunteer for that class, who really helps me to manage them. My level 2 class is a huge roomful of 18 young adult students who are all (nearly all) very fluent in English and have plenty to say. They can be great fun (they barrack each other) and the thing is to get to know them as individuals (not easy with 18 of them) and at the same time keep the lesson moving along. No volunteer; and I have never taught that kind of group before (3 hours) so I hope to get a bit of advice from my colleague Sue on Tuesday.