School....week 2

I decided to not worry about making mistakes at school and not be miserable hiding in my house.  If I miss anything important   I'm teaching 8th grade biology, by the way.  I have 6 Turmas (or classes) and they each meet twice a week for 45 minutes.  If you're doing the math that's 9 hours in the classroom.  

My classes have been going much better.  After the first two class meetings the students have figured out how to understand my weird Portuguese and I'm getting used to understanding their quick Portuguese.

I also subbed an 11th grade class and 2 other 8th grade bio classes.  I'm not really sure what the story with this is.  It happens like this:  KNOCK KNOCK. (that's someone at my door)  I go and open the door "Por favor..blah blah blah dar aula blah blah blah"  Oooh okay.  "Sooo you want me to give your classes for you" "Yes" And I do.  And I hope that this means that when I want them to cover a class for me (so I can travel!) that I can call upon all these favors I've banked.  However, I'm afraid they're just taking advantage of me.  Either way, right now it's good for me to be in the classroom more, practicing Portuguese more.  One of these classes I subbed for had a really cheeky kid sitting in the front.  Kid had the audacity to turn around to the girl behind her and say "He doesn't know how to speak Portuguese"  So I walked over to her desk, put my hands on either side, bent down and said, in English.  "Do you want me to teach in English instead?"  The class stopped snickering and she was good for the rest of class.  

I also had a really hairy time with my second night turma that I only met this week.  They had their first bio class at 9:20 on Thursday night.  I walked in and there were 60 WILD kids who hadn't had a teacher the previous period.  They saw me and started going a bit crazytown.  I stood at the front and waited for them to settle down.  I was able to tell them my name and give them the class rules and then time was up.  I had been dealing with indisciplinados outside the classroom all period and at one point I had shut the door all the way. When class was over I collected my books and turned to walk out the door with 60 kids hot on my heels.  That's when I realized the door didn't have a handle on the inside and we were locked in.  I got out of the way of the stampede and waited for the kids to figure it out so we could leave.

And then it was Friday night and I was done with my second week.  Way better than the first.  I'm happy to report that now I'm excited for my third week.