shitload

"No West for the reary," as the joke goes about us fatasses. I have a ton of cooking to do this evening in preparation for a series of three jjong-p'ati (end-of-term celebration), so expect only intermittent posting at best over the next few hours.

Two of the parties are happening tomorrow (Thursday). The first party won't require much: everyone has promised to bring something, and I'm simply bringing the materials for a petit déjeuner à la française, as I did last time: milk, sliced baguette, butter, Nutella, and French jam. Make a bowl of hot chocolate, spread butter and jam (or Nutella) on your slice of bread, dip in the hot chocolate, and enjoy. Seeeeemple.

The second party will happen right after the first, and this will be a sort of brunch event. I'm once again cooking my meat sauce and bringing along spaghetti, and throwing in some garlic bread to boot. Other students will be bringing in salad, drinks, and desserts.

On Friday, I'll have a third party with my "first place" class, the Intensive 4s. They surprised me by ending up in first place, despite their blasé attitude toward the course. My second class of the day, a Level 1 conversation class, would have been in first place had it not been for two students who failed to show up for crucial exams (a crime for which they received zeroes).

I turned in my grades for the intensive class earlier today. Although this class ended up in first place, no one in the class received an "A," primarily because no one could be bothered to do the homework (blogging) in a consistent manner. If the people who kindly contributed comments to the blog in question would care to offer advice on how to make blogging-as-homework more interesting, please write in. Keep in mind that I view homework this way: (1) as a way to reinforce things learned in class, and/or (2) a way to move beyond things learned in class. In either case, homework must be related to what is done in class, and can't represent a sudden and radical departure from the curriculum. That, to me, is useless. English teaching shouldn't merely be a matter of "throw enough knowledge until some of it sticks," and homework should never consist of mere busy-work or other random activities.

The intro-level class, which came in third, boasts two "A" students. The collective average of the Intros is low because this class also had some spectacular failures: people who simply didn't have the right stuff when it came to learning English. Perhaps these failures were having a bad-hair semester. We'll never know: a few of them simply dropped out without a word, perhaps not mature enough to face the prospect of a test that would hold them accountable for their own learning. I was heartened, though, that so many students decided to tough it out to the end. When I compare these morning classes (Intro and Level 1) to the ones I had the previous semester... well, there's no comparison.

Enough ruminating! I'm off to make pasketti sauce.

There'll be no one to stop us this time.


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