An actual reflection

So I thought I might actually do some reflecting on the current state of my teaching, just for a change. I have time here to do this sort of thing, it seems, and I thought I might use the extra time I have to make my classes as interesting as possible. There is some incentive to do this. As I am employed by an outside company, and not by the university, and only see our company "Program Coordinator" once a week, the only measure they really have of our usual performance is student attendance records. And a lack of complaints from them, I suppose! Anyway, the idea is we have to make our classes interesting, fun and relaxing so that they want to come and don't miss too many lessons, thus giving us a good attendance percentage. Yay.
So my current problem is my morning classes. I keep trying out new games or activities that don't work so well the first time through. And as the class is only 40 minutes, there isn't much time for changing things to get it right. Of course, by the time I repeat the lesson at lunchtime, I've tweaked things to make it work better, but I'm finding myself thanking the morning class for being guinea pigs! I need to work on getting things right the first time, I guess.
The 40 minute thing is a definite change. I haven't had such short lessons since my first time in China, 4 years ago, and I haven't taught pure conversation much lately, or such high level students, so all in all, I'm rather glad to have extra free time, as I seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time planning the 40 minutes worth of lesson I teach each day, and trying to think of ways to extend the plan to provide some challenge to my higher level students. And then 15 minutes before each lesson writing things on the board (not much time to do that when you have to fit in so much else) and of course I'm never in the same classroom twice, so I write it all up three times a day. Again, improving where necessary as the day progresses!
I think I might use some of my free time to read up on a few things as well, like conversation class theory - there are some good books on teaching conversation here on my computer, and a few in our small selection of resources at school. I might actually attempt to learn something, and improve my classes.
Shock! Horror!

And here's a picture of our teacher's room, for no good reason. It seems to double as a storage room for spare chairs and desks...