It was the best of days, it was the worst of days

Man, on man my students do fry me! Tuesdays are the best and worse days and I'm glad that will soon (hopefully) be over.

My level one class, as always, excited, motivated and ready to listen and learn. The DVD player remote was missing so instead of interactive semi-boredom, we had a discussion about advertising and casinos. These students are so smart and it's so pleasurable coaxing them to think a little more deeply and so gratifying when they do. It's also a bit terrifying to realize how much globalization has invaded their lives in forms I hadn't thought of.

Take the casinos for instance, what we spoke of today, basically giant malls with the added bonus of possibly winning free cash, I mean really, what else would greedy, desperate people want? But not just them. As I illustrated for my class, there's a wealth of things to do in a casino aside from gamble, you can shop, you can eat, you can watch Beyonce or the Black Eyed Peas' latest concert, go to the bathroom, get free drinks or complementary cake, whatever your whim. They have something for everyone lure them in, create a desire, distract them and then why not throw in a coin or to and try your luck...why not indeed?

It kills me how elated they make me feel, how satisfied and alive with teaching, more motivated to do more for them, find other ways of reaching outside our shitty curriculum and actually teaching them useful things and then I get to my Level 3's.

Without fail they manage to nettle and annoy me until I'm in a rage. The problem today: they have a week before their final exam research projects are do, I've done everything imaginable to help them figure out projects, how to structure their reports etc. and about 95% of the class hasn't decided on projects yet.

It started out promising. They were attentive, even asked questions for how their oral presentation should be structured, what they were required to put in and what exactly a pie chart depicted, but as soon as I asked them for their ideas a hush fell over the class.

FOUR students, FOUR had project topics that they'd already told me about and were well on their way to finishing their research, the rest, and this class has 34 students had not. The next hour and forty-five minutes managed to grate every nerve in my body. I had one students not once but five times give me bullshit project topics so he could leave like those who actually had coherent viable ideas. I don't know what to do.

It's so hard not to get discouraged by this continual blatant disinterest. I mean, yes, some students towards they end, for whatever reason, decided to start trying, stop chatting or falling asleep and are actually work on this but there are still those who don't and will not care. What am I supposed to do? Am I justified in failing them, because they definitely do not deserve to pass or will that change anything? I mean really, this is their last Oral English class, are they going to do anything next semester if they have to retake it?

what to do, what to do. thankfully, I got a package today full of wonderful memories and twizzlers, thanks Neha and I had a phenomenal run with really great music, check out run2rhythm.com so I feel better, but damn will I be glad when I'm done with this class, one more week...