Why Does Tomorrow Have To Be Monday?

So work this week was not fun, yet again.  On top of everything else we've had to do this week, we got to sit through another seminar in which they briefed us on their expectations -- a month into classes, I might add -- and left us feeling like they had no respect for us as teachers or human beings.  Sarah and I weren't the only ones who seemed to feel that way.  They only thing we can do is grit our teeth and bear it for the next few months, really. I'm pretty sure they understand that if one of us is dismissed the other will likely resign.

Sarah's Birthday was fun, at any rate.  We had a good time with our friends, eating snacks and cupcakes AND HAVING RELAXING FUN TIME.  Friday night we managed to drag ourselves out of the apartment for a lovely dinner at Teatralna -- a high class restaurant close to our flat -- and had a romantic stroll in the fog.  It was a desperately needed excursion, and both of us felt so much better afterward.  We would have taken pictures of dinner, but it was too beautiful to live.  We took pictures of dessert though (barely)!

Panna Cotta with Crushed Raspberries and Chocolate Soufflé with Mint Syrup

A Pile of Leaves in The Park (I couldn't resist).  Love the effect of the flash on the mist.

The Mist-Shrouded Park

Looking down Zeromskiego.

IT'S PAYDAY!!!

Now to plan Halloween lessons and attempt to learn the Thriller dance.  Might start writing a story for a Halloween post too...

And Another One Gone

Sooooooooo.....

There are still a few groups that leave me feeling like a complete and utter failure as a teacher, but now that most of my students have books to work out of there is something for them to focus on and some semblance of order in the classroom.

One of my groups of pre-teens were giving me a tonne of trouble until I explained to them exactly what it takes to get the maximum number of talents from me at each lesson.  The boys began actually trying to get their points, but the girls quickly became distracted by the one student who has not yet been given her book.

My 6 year olds, however are still a handful and weren't very engaged in the lesson.  That goes double for the other class of 6 year olds that I teach on Wednesdays.  They weren't even interested in the reward system that Sarah and  I created together to try to inspire (and by inspire I really mean bribe) them to pay more attention in class.  I think a lot of it is just that they don't understand what I'm trying to tell them, they are confused by the fact that I don't understand them at all, and that the classes are too long for their attention spans.  I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't be more beneficial for them to have the English teacher and the Polish teacher together at all times to eliminate the communication gap and still surround them with English.  I've observed some of my problem groups in their lessons with my Polish co-teacher and they seem to behave for her, and generally like the lessons...but I wonder if the fact that she speaks Polish when it comes to concepts they don't understand in English  -- and setting boundaries when necessary -- is part of the key.

I honestly don't feel like they're learning anything from me.

I seem to be meeting with a little bit of success in the other areas of my career though!  I would look forward to my other classes a lot more if this bloody chest cold would go away...and there's the need to update the on-line register for the last three weeks on top of everything else the teachers have to do.  With any luck, things will get easier as time progresses and things steadily fall into place.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the classroom observations from our boss in Kozienice this week.  Really looking forward to that.  At least I know she will likely come on a day where she can observe Sarah and I in one visit -- which eliminates some of my worst classes.

I am trying really hard to hold on to my optimism, and to keep a cheerful poker face when my students make me want to hide my disappointment in them and myself under the desk.  I've tried throwing as many new tactics at them as I have learned in this last week -- but all of that knowledge doesn't stop me from wondering if I haven't made a mistake in trying to do all of this when my experiences are minimal at best.

I don't have any choice by to keep going though, and the little buggers are going to have to try harder if they want to get rid of me.  I got myself into this, and I am bloody well going to finish it.  Two problem classes out of 24 is an accomplishment, right?

More Thanksgiving Pictures

Another One Down

This week was kind of so-so work wise.

I felt a little bit better with some of the kids that I was actually able to plan lessons out of the book with...but how do you get 5 year olds to sit and help you with book activities?  They don't seem to have the attention span necessary to do it, and they neither understand nor care that you have a certain amount that you have to cover with them in each lesson.

In other lessons it doesn't necessarily help me that not all of my pupils have their books yet.  I get told "you can start in the book now," but nobody has mentioned whether or not things need to be photocopied beforehand and I start class feeling like an idiot for not having this knowledge or being prepared for it.  It's fine when I'm at the main school in Kozienice, but it becomes a problem when I'm teaching at Ilza or Jedlnia because we don't have access to a printer or a photocopier since we are in actual schools instead of a building owned by English College.

As the weeks progress these things will iron out.

Sarah and I are both still frustrated by the small children that we have to teach on a regular basis.  On Friday we miraculously had the same age group at the same time and were therefore able to share the classes--which was bloody FANTASTIC!!!  Neither of us were entirely sure if they were even the same classes we'd had last week because it was like a breath of fresh air!  And we actually had enough energy for the classes that came afterward because we took the small children in shifts.

Now I just need to figure out how to get my one group of ten year olds to stop behaving like the five year olds.  It will work out.

Tomorrow I'm going to one of the other schools so that I can observe how more experienced teachers handle the classes and maybe take my observations back to Sarah. 

Some of the gems from my students this week included "I am a dog," and "my mind" in response to a game in which they were required to name something that was dirty.

The view from the school in Ilza

The view from my classroom.  It's dusk and it was taken through a window so the picture is a little grainy.

In the enormous flurries of last-minute class planning, we haven't really had much opportunity to spend a lot of time on ourselves.  The only respite we've really had from work was this weekend, since we spent it preparing to spend Canadian Thanksgiving with our American co-workers.  The potluck idea failed slightly since everyone else was just as busy as we were, but it was still a good meal with shockingly little left over.  Since our oven is fairly small and whole turkeys difficult to come by, we did a roast chicken with a couple of turkey legs that we de-boned and stuffed prior to roasting in the midst of our extra stuffing...

The idea was excellent in theory -- and it still seems like a workable idea, but I think the practice needs a little tweaking before I can get it right.  I think the turkey was just left in a little too long and the bread probably sapped most of the moisture out of the turkey leg in spite of copious amounts of butter being applies to both the stuffing on the inside of the leg and underneath the skin.

The chicken on the other hand, was so moist and tender that the leg came off when Sarah tried to test its readiness.  The broth had burnt off, but somehow we managed to reconstitute it into a shockingly palatable gravy.  Preparing it was interesting, though.  As I was rinsing it out we discovered that part of the reason the chicken had so much skin around the neck was because the butcher who had prepped it left the cervical vertebrae more or less intact.  Before I could even finish cleaning it I had to sever the remainder of the neck to open up the whole a little more.  Once it was rinsed I couldn't even get all the water out from under the skin--but I think that only contributed to the deliciousness in the end.

We boiled the potatoes, and prepped all the ingredients necessary for Kris to make a fantastic pot of garlic mashed potatoes that I am quite pleased to say we have some left overs from.  They will be extra delicious tomorrow.  No pumpkin pie, sadly.  It seems canned pumpkin pie filling does not exist in Radom, and with everything else we've had going there wasn't enough time nor oven space to roast a pumpkin and do it the hard way.  That's alright...

 

After the feast.

We'll just do it in November when the Americans have their turn at hosting Thanksgiving, since we are one of the lucky few who actually have an oven.

First Week of Work...and an Ironic Realization

I'm sure all teachers probably get the jitters when they're officially being paid for their first jobs, and I'm sure all teachers probably wonder what they've gotten themselves into when they face that first group of rowdy children that refuse to listen to them on the first day of class.  I'm sure most ESL teachers working abroad have a hard time getting their students to focus in those first lessons because they themselves are considered an exotic oddity to these young people that surround them: the Native English speaker.  I'm sure it's normal to come home on your first Friday night after your first week of teaching and wonder if maybe you hadn't made a mistake in choosing this particular profession...

It is normal, right?

Monday was my first official day at work, and it went well in spite of a few last minute changes to my schedule and having no bloody clue what I was supposed to do if my students burned through the activities I had planned before the time was up.  The vast majority of my classes are 90 minutes in length--before this I was only ever responsible for 60 minute classes, and the extra half hour will definitely take some getting used to.

Throughout the week I found that my enjoyment of teaching English varied with the maturity level of the students.  The younger my students were, the less likely they were to want to play language games, or speak English in spite of English College's policy that the students not use Polish in the classroom.  I understand that they're just kids, and they're coming back from a long break during which English was an afterthought.  I also understand that the younger students may find someone who doesn't speak their language at all to be a strange concept.  Their homeland isn't a place where everyone is descended from immigrants in one way or another.  I on the other hand, have spent my entire life around people who had to learn English the hard way--and even encountered a few who didn't speak the tongue at all.  When I was the age some of these kids are, these people seemed mysterious to me and I always wondered what sort of stories they could tell if they had the time.

Funny, that.  Now I'm the curiosity, but only the older students ask for my story. The rest only see themselves stuck in another classroom after being at school all day--and the majority aren't very fond of school to begin with.

Friday was the most brutal day of them all.  After an exhausting week of repeating "getting to know you" activities of varying degrees of difficulty with all of my students from Monday to Thursday, I got to play with a lively group of five and six year olds who understood enough to play "Simon Says," do the "Hokey Pokey," and play a game that involved saying a colour when the ball was thrown to them...and they're attention span gave out 40 minutes into a 60 minute lesson.  I'm not sure what happened after that: my Polish is far more limited than the English spoken by these children.  As far as I can guess, the game they started playing pitted boys against girls (myself included as the flying balls can attest) in an attempt to touch the ball to the other team's rug whilst shouting the random English words they knew as they threw the ball.

After that I had a class of seven year olds that learned how to play "Go Fish" and exercised their prowess at using the question "Do you have...?"  and working on their numbers.  It was also a learning experience for me the first time I heard one of these children say "do you have an ass?"  I was shocked until an exchange of cards illustrated to me that "As" is the Polish word for "Ace."

Then were the 10 year olds who got a little too crazy while playing a game that involved throwing a ball and giving a sentence that begins with "I like" when you catch it.  After one of the cleaning ladies came in and said something to me in Polish (the only word I could make out was "angielski") I managed to quiet them down with a game of Uno--which I have discovered a majority of my students know and love.

I had thirteen year olds who thoroughly enjoyed "2 truths and 3 lies," then spent the rest of the class playing Uno and asking questions about Canada.  After that was a pair of older teens who were preparing for an oral exam in English that students are required to take on leaving high school.  The class was mostly spent getting to know each other and playing "Go Fish" and "War," which both girls thoroughly enjoyed.

The last hour of my Friday was spent with a 2 year old, a 4 year old, and their Dad.  The only expectation was that I play with them and expose them to English at their mother's request.  I think they tested their father's patience more than they tested mine.  It turns out "Peekaboo" can be profitably turned into a game that entertains toddlers and gets them (or at least the 4 year old) to use a little English at the same time.

Last night we hung out with Kris and Ginny (not their real names) and went out on the town a little to experience more of Radom's night life.  We got home in the small hours of morning, and as I fell asleep I realized that I had gotten cold feet about going back to work on Monday.  When I explained this to Sarah she just laughed and said she would gladly trade for her groups of 5 year olds that would rather scream every time she opened her mouth than try to play English games, or try to hide under the tables and in the closets rather than engage in activities.  She also made a point of mentioning that I should understand children at least a little considering I've put up with her for four years.

Maybe this would be easier if I could remember some of the things I thought and felt as a kid, before all of our lives went sideways.  One of my greatest fears as a teacher is one day having to guide that one child who finds theirself in the exact same position I was in.

Maybe these are just growing pains that will go away as we all adjust to this new routine.

I certainly hope so.

If Karen Densky is reading this blog at all, she is probably laughing.  While I was doing my practicum for the TESL program I absolutely loathed the reflective journal assignments because I had made it one of my life's missions to avoid introspection--and thereby avoid touching upon any subject that would bring up painful memories or otherwise rouse other monsters in that Pandora's Box otherwise known as the human psyche. 

I didn't realize until half of this entry was written that I started doing it without even being aware that it was a journal that I have been writing this whole time.

A journal about learning and exploring all aspects of my journey as a teacher and a human being, not just this new country that has become my temporary home.