So it’s 1pm and today has already been a lovely day.  I got up at the insane hour of seven.  I didn’t even know there was a seven in the morning.  I got dressed and rushed to my train.  It took me an hour to cross the city and visit the first client with my new firm.  Substitute teaching can be quite intense, even at a language school.

I got there and everything was great.  The teacher had prepared an extensive, but boring, lesson for me.  My agency, the head of the school and the normal teacher all warned me that these students were terrible and really ill-behaved.

They were great for me.  There were three Israeli children and one Turkish boy who joined the class yesterday.  The poor kid was excluded from the constant chatter in Hebrew.  I mixed in a few of my legendary games and just endured the provided worksheets for 3 hours.

I used a lot what I learned from Seb Drake and Adam Lyons today.  I really focused on low variance teaching to minimize the risk of ill-behaviour and when they started talking about religion I cut the thread to keep tensions down.  I ended the class by playing a 30 minute version of the question game in order to build deep rapport with the students.  It was really great and hopefully made the Turkish kid feel more a part of things.

After class the head of school was shocked at my experience.  Maybe it’s just really understanding ShaneGame that got me through.  I was unreactive when the kids talked too much in Hebrew, took too long for their break and ate in the classroom.  I don’t want to be their enemy.  I am a really laid back teacher and I stayed low variance.  It wasn’t as exciting as my high variance teaching, but it was smoother.

After class, I ran some game on different employees to make them like me if I have to come back here ever again.  Then I went out to hunt down my first meal of the day.  Now my weigh in with Hunk last night was atrocious.  He ordered me to start writing down everything I eat again for the next two weeks.  I really shouldn’t have stopped in the first place.

So I kept walking past italian restaurants and hamburger shops.  I am trying to avoid carbs and unhealthy food.  Finally I found a hippie cafe.  I had a lovely sandwich and a fruit smoothie.  One of the ones with just ice and fruit juice in it.  As I  am taking off my tie, I open the lady at the next table.  She jumps at the bait and we talk for 20 minutes.  She tells me about her son that is my age, how she was a fashion teacher in London at a university and about her Japanese religion.  It was really interesting.  She was nice.  I think her son might be a great connection for me.  I am going to email him tonight.

After Adam’s insanely good talk last night, I am more focused than even on developing connectors and pushing my DJ career forward.