Welcome back!
Since I’m 14 hours ahead of where I grew up, today is officially Thanksgiving! Happy Turkey Day!
This is my 3rd Thanksgiving abroad in a row, and it’ll be the 3rd that has consisted of a pot luck dinner at someone’s apartment with a bunch of displaced folks. Last year in Buenos Aires was a lot of fun, we had about 13 people in an apartment and even managed to find a turkey! This year we won’t have any big birds to cook (80k won / $70 for a small turkey?!), but we’ll make do. I think the company is more important than the food anyways.
I had a chance to speak to my family this morning, and I’m glad to say they’re doing well. Everyone is getting together down in Augusta, and I’m missing out on the epic cooking of my mother, her sisters, and my grandmother. Miss you guys!
This week in school has been really interesting because of my class exam. I’ve been giving short one-on-one interviews to my students, and some of them have really surprised me. Girls in class that absolutely refuse to speak to me in front of their peers suddenly bust out the present perfect while talking about their hobbies, or boys that are always rowdy in class give me sound reasoning for their Starcraft obsession. On the flip side of that coin, I have students that are superstars in class but were terrified of me in this exam setting. If they get this nervous around me, I can only imagine the stress of the Korean SAT for them.
With that said, giving these exams is nerve wracking for me as well. I don’t like having to assign grades based on a distribution for each class that roughly follows 10% As, 20% Bs, 40% Cs, 20% Ds, and 10% Es. It’s mandated by the school, but I try to give the students every opportunity possible to get up to that C level. I know that their grade in my class is only a very small portion of their overall English scores, but I can’t say I like failing a kid.
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