An All Nighter

I pulled an all nighter.

And all I got to show for it was a few NI ("needs improvement") categories in my class observation evaluation that my colleague did today.

Sigh...

Eight years ago when I started to teach language, when I reached the Food chapter I had the idea to create a vocabulary handout for food words that I titled "The Food ABCs." It has these categories: Fruit, Vegetables & Legumes, Typical Brazilian Dishes & Savory Appetizers, Fish, Spices & Herbs, and Desserts/Sweets followed by lists of words in alphabetical order. Not particularly brilliant, but I thought it was a fun way to organize the really extensive and fascinating (at least to me) food related vocabulary.

I fine tuned the handout over these past years, and I have always wanted to find a way to include pictures of the foods by making a slide show or even a video (I don't really edit videos, though).  Since I had to teach this particular lesson when being evaluated, I had the "brilliant" stupid idea to make it for today's class. It was the perfect excuse! (People with ADHD are always searching for good "excuses" or firm deadlines as motivator to get things done).

After fiddling with power point and prezi, I decided I would stick to Good Old Word, a program* I've been using since 1994 when my parents got their first computer. Word kept crashing repeatedly, but I kept working and saving the document as a PDF until I was done at 5 am. The Word document is now blank (?!?!) :-( but I have a PDF!!
    *now programs are called "apps" on PCs why??!! :-( #hugePetPeeveofmine

So, after all this effort, I took 10+ minutes of class to present the document and, as a result, I got a few NIs and some "sermonizing" about the proper way to introduce vocabulary, get students talking, and teach a language class.

Such a waste of time and effort! I need to write this down so I remember to teach a class exactly as prescribed when he evaluates me again in 2 years.

I desperately need to get myself to bed now, but I wanted to write this post.