"A Meeting with the Bobs"

For a reference to my title, go rent, "Office Space," in fact, it's an old release, buy the bloody thing, you won't be disappointed.

Well, today Ii had a meeting with Keith and Andy about my students test results. Not bad, but could use some improvement. They knew all the stuff, but weren't used to using it. With some help, they all could spit out what was required... the verdict? I don't review enough. Sounds fair enough to me.

So, how did this happen? How did they get to the end of level two and not be able to say that we use 'an' infront of a word that starts with a vowel sound? "Because 'a' is a vowel," is the proper response... they knew why and when to use 'an' but their explanations were not so hot. Keith went on for a minute about that and asked me why. I was not to happy with his tone and told it straight as I could.

Last October, my students had poor phonics (they did, but they could read fine, go figure), really poor. Why? My fault, but also, no one bothered to check in on my class for 14 months!!! This time, my phonics were good, but other stuff was missing... October was 5 months away. My solution? Follow the teachers manual and have someone come into my class once a month, doesn't have to be all of my classes, maybe just one. Keith's been threatening to do this at the teachers meetings since before I started. Keith backed off and almost apologized... pretty good for him.

Short of the long: Retests at the end of April, contract negotiations at the end of May, contract expires or renews the end of July... assuming retests check out ok. Now he's off to test the other teachers as I have finished running the gauntlet with some skin to spare. I have forgotten about my raise last month, I'll ask for it in my new contract or after my tests... depending. I would like to break the $700/hour mark (CAN$28/hour). On a good point... the Canadian Dollar fell and the American dollar is rising, now is a good time to change my US$1,000 left over from my Cambodia trip, add in some Taiwanese cash (I seem to have more than usual lately) and send it off to Canada. Seeing as I don't have blinds in my window anymore, tomorrow might be a good day to go to the bank.

P.S. My water heater was leaking, I called my landlord last night, plumber came today and replaced a pipe, CAN$12 and it's deducted from my rent, he also came within 10 minutes of when he said he would. I can't see ANYTHING like this happening back home.