The Problem in Which I Have Far Too Many Students to Possibly Remember Them

     Previous to the winter holidays I thought I had a lot of students. I had sixteen different (each of about 50 or 60 people) that I taught once every week. Having more than 800 students was tough, especially when I only saw each student for 40 minutes a week. In the last weeks before vacation I was finally beginning to recognize almost all of my students. I was helped by the fact that my school has an incredibly unattractive school uniform that many of my students wear during school and when they are around town. However, I still found myself smiling at random people in the off chance that they were my students, and mixing up which students were in which classes. Little did I know that after vacation my situation was bound to get exponentially more challenging. While before I taught a mere 800 or more students, I now teach upwards of 1700 students. 

     I am continuing to teach the grade 10 students that I began teaching last semester, however now I only teach them every other week. During the weeks that I am not teaching grade ten I teach seventeen classes of grade eleven. Essentially, I am now attempting to familiarize myself with over 900 new students that I see for only 40 minutes every two weeks, while managing to still remember the original 800 students who I also see only once a week. It would be entirely accurate to say that I am a bit overwhelmed by my sheer number of students.

     Another new challenge of teaching this semester is that the students in grade eleven are actually quite old. The youngest of them is probably about sixteen years old, but I believe that I have at least a few students that are nineteen. On the one hand these students are really cool. Their English is good enough to actually hold a decent conversation, and I believe that I will be able to make decent friends with them. In my best grade eleven classes I truly have fun teaching. However, on the other hand, in the classes that are less focused and less interested in English it is nearly impossible to discipline them. I am too close to them in age and I understand far too well the boredom that comes after several years of going to school every day and doing the same mind numbing work every day. 

     I think I am simply giving up on the possibility that I will be able to know all of my students faces, or names (because I find Chinese names impossible to remember). As for my grade eleven, my primary strategy is just to become their friend so that they can feel comfortable speaking English with me. Also,  they are cool, and I like having cool friends.