Signing in the School

    After all the mistakes from the past four meetings, I meticulously prepared for this week's, in hopes that it would go without a hitch. I had created the slideshows well in advance, I reviewed the slides the day before, I printed the vocabulary sheet I would need for the end-of-class game, and I had even downloaded the slides onto a USB in case the wifi was down (this was a serious possibility as the school wifi had been completely down more than twice in the past couple of weeks).     But as I rushed over to Ms. Nguyen's room to grab the projector at 2:45, I couldn't stop myself from expecting something new and unexpected to go wrong.     By the time I had wheeled the projector cart to the Student Lounge, there were about eight people waiting outside.      I still can't believe how many people are in the club. Considering that most clubs in our school have about 10-15 members, I think we're doing pretty well!     After fiddling with the projector for five minut

     I have never admired teachers more than I do right now. I always pictured them going home with nothing on their to-do list apart from spending time with family, preparing a homecooked meal, sitting down to TV while passively marking assignments, throwing together a 10-minute slideshow for the next day, reading a good book in bed, and turning out the lights by 9 pm. Okay, well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the gist. I didn't think it was a lot of work.     I thought wrong. The time spent in class teaching is only the tip of the iceberg. There are hours and hours put into a 90-minute lesson and a constant flow of emails to respond to.     I'm just running an ASL club, so I don't even have any assignments to mark and I receive a scarce amount of emails. All I have to do is create lessons and activities to fill 60 minutes every two weeks. But you'd be surprised at how much time that actually takes.     Typically, in the week between meetings, I start getti