Chaos in the classroom

It feels a little bit that way sometimes, particularly in speaking classes.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not saying they're out of control.  In fact, they come to heel pretty quickly and if any of them step out of line (talking when I'm talking, for example) they soon stop if you single them out.

However, it's just a bit mad at times.

Today, for example, it was really windy.  As I wrote before, it's ferociously hot here at the moment, so the breeze was definitely welcome and there was good reason to leave the windows open.  However, it also meant that every piece of paper not anchored down soon flew off the desk.  I am used to this to a certain extent, as the ceiling fans are usually on right now, but today it was about five times worse than usual.  Joy.

What else?  A few common things: 1) I forgot my lesson plan!  Oops.  Luckily my good memory did its job and I remembered what I'd planned.  More or less.  2) Dropped the board rubber on my denim skirt.  I hate chalk!  I spend soooooooo much time dusting down my clothes and often just end up spreading more chalk.  3) Caught my nail on the black board - I HATE that feeling.

Oh, and my mature student decided to make today his first class.  Oh yes, I have an engineer who works for one of the mobile phone companies coming to my first-year oral English class to improve his English...  Not a problem, but I'm not sure how keen he was on singing 'Stand By Me' with the rest of the students.  Tee hee.  I enjoyed it though.

One more good thing: in English classes at university in China there tend to be very few boys - the most I've got is 5 out of a class of about 50.  They also, almost without fail, sit together at the back of the classroom.  And, I'm sorry to say, are quite often the laziest.  So today I was more than happy to see four boys in the front row of my class.  The reason "It's because we're confidence[sic]."  Hmm... must work on the whole noun / adjective thing.  Next week...