Cancelled Class, The Death of Print Books, Culinary Art Successes

Today I ran off my answers to the questions my ESL 140 High Intermediate ESL students wrote.  I also wrote the lesson plan on the board in case there would be time for a lesson before Erin came in to cancel the class.  But she came in around 8:15 to tell them that the class would be cancelled and to give them options and add stickers.  I think John, the one who graduated from Galileo High School and said he wanted to continue with me, will be in my Tuesday/Thursday class, as will my student from Belarus and the student from Mexico who just added.  I also got a message from the South Korean student who's studying aeronomics at the airport.

I let them go and used the time to make copies of the speaking listening book for another class because the policy of the book store is to order only half of the order we place because they think the students will go on Amazon, and the publishing houses are suffering too much to make it easy to return the books not sold.  Tonight my tenant, who studies at SFSU, came up to see whether we could get faster DSL and share the cost, and he said one reason he needs faster is that he can't download books from here.  That's what I was talking to a colleague about in the parking lot as I was leaving today at 1:00:  The students will be downloading all their books and reading them on their tablets.  If I weren't retiring, I'd have to change my way of thinking.

This evening I had responses from both the Vietnamese transgender student who studies Culinary Arts and the Chinese student who started in the program after graduating from SFSU.  I contacted Nanette Asimov about them as well as about Henry, a former student who was working at the Olympic Club the last time I ate their with Robert, our host for View and Chew. 

One more "item" in a day in the life of a City College teacher was my response from 'Ana in Tonga.  I'd contacted her to wish her a happy new year and express concern about the cyclone that hit an outer island.
She wrote back tomorrow (even my message had the date January 16) and told me that "people there are slowly recovering from the shock of finding themselves losing everything. Our schools there are badly affected and we are trying to find ways and means of starting the school year with no classrooms, no resources and no staff houses and children who are without shelter or clothes! But we are confident God will provide!"  I also got a response from Jim, who was a Peace Corps Volunteer on an island close to the one so ravaged.

I'm too tired to do any more lesson preparation now, but I want to think of some way to keep the students engaged and interacting for the three hour class tomorrow!