Life of a Kat

There will always be this kind of person who will make you feel less, useless and just not enough -- not qualified to do what you are doing and make you feel that you can never do it right. First and foremost, check if that person is even qualified himself/herself. Most likely, he or she isn’t because if he/she is, he/she won’t talk to you that way or make you feel that way. Him: Kat, you are not licensed, right? Me: What do you mean? If I am a licensed teacher? I am a licensed teacher in PH. Him: You also got TESOL? But that really doesn’t mean anything, especially as a language teacher. (Shrugs his shoulders and thinks of another demeaning thing to say again.) Me: Oh well, yes, I have TESOL. Him: I mean, none of us here is a qualified language teachers. Me: Hmmm.. I really don’t get you. Well, in PH since I am a Science major, I taught core subjects- Math, Science and English in Elementary and I can teach Physics, but I haven’t really practiced that on...

1.      I’ve been a little down lately. Hormones? As always. LOL. But 2 of our good students are ending their contract because they will be moving to different places starting April. The thought of people leaving makes me really sad, but I can only hope for the best for everyone, I just hope that we will not forget each other.  2.      Been trying to keep up with the schedules but still get slips every now and then. 3.      Cooking again, but this time, trying to follow keto recipes, but only the easy ones plus I still do carbo-loading when I am out with friends on weekend nights. 4.      I will take my Nihonggo teacher on a date this Friday. I am pretty excited about it. Then, while I was thinking of it, I remembered my mom. I wish I can take out my mom on random dates like that too. 5.      We gave our branch manager a very pretty bouquet of flowers for ...

This week is Week 42 in our “Academic Calendar”, marked as the final week for this term and the kids will be off for a week of no class then back to school again by the second week of April for a new “Academic Term”. Today is a celebration of a classroom small win. But everything takes time. Everything takes a trial and error and trust that things will work out on its own. For times that I get the chance to handle this class, I really try to think of ways to make them speak more than I do. I know that I have a lot to share, wanting them to speak up more and just reminding them that it’s okay to make mistakes when speaking out loud. Since tonight is the last class and there are only two of them, I asked them to choose what their top 3 topics from the last term and give their reasons and what they would want to learn more about in the future and why. I let them decide on how many minutes they would need to write their outlines, they said 5 minutes (but t...