October 7, 2010: Blog frustration!!!

October 7, 2010: I tried MANY times this morning to upload pictures into my blog, but for some reason the pictures I tried to upload were not placed in the location of the blog where I had wanted to insert them -- they always seem to go to the top of the page instead of where I place the cursor. This means that until I can figure out what to do, I won't be able to insert any pictures into my blog! This is extremely frustrating! I had wanted to get caught up with my blog entries quickly and it looks like I won't be able to.

Today the form teacher fo 9E observed me teaching 9E class 2, my challenging class. I couldn't believe what happened -- the class was VERY cooperative, listened intently, participated in my lecture, and even answered questions! I was dumbfounded. Afterward, I went to Fekete Kati and asked if the form teacher could please come to all of my classes for the rest of the year! Kati told me that after the class, the form teacher told her how much she enjoyed my class. What a great start to my day. Later I talked with Bede Kati to discuss one of her classes that I feel is not "into" my class as it should be. This class has presented challenges to other teachers as well, so it could  be that they're just tired of learning. Kati told me that she discussed the matter with them and was told that the class enjoyed  having me teach them, but they want to do more than just dialogs. They told her that they would really like to discuss with me what American culture is like and how it differs from Hungarian culture. Of course this may be a good springboard for getting them to participate in "free talking" instead of in constrained dialogs. This is good provided they do most of the talking since after all, this is supposed to be an English conversation class where THEY speak English. I'll have to give this some thought so that my lessons still teach them how to speak English, and aren't just a time to listen to the American speak. In the mean time two senior students approached me about doing an interview for them next Monday. They want to learn more about JPL and American life.

Speaking of JPL, I received a big box of JPL public outreach materials that Joe Beerer plans on giving to the students after they've heard him talk at school about GRAIL and gravity. How nice that JPL sent so many great materials for the students.  I'm sure they'll really appreciate receiving them. There are several classes that are quite anxious to hear Joe speak so we may have to have two talks on this.

The following picture is of a poster that I found amusing. I believe it's for a VW Golf.

Hungarian Poster