He Cut the Cheese

Teaching has been crazy, hectic but fun! I teach Primary Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 4-7 and then I teach ELE on Tuesday and Wednesday from 10-1. Even though I don’t teach until 4 in the afternoon most days, I usually get the school before noon to start preparing. Jenna and I have been taking the 7:50am marshrutka so that way we don’t have to walk up the sketchy stairs, plus we seriously are always doing something when we get to the school.. That’s why it’s taken me a while to update my blog, and now you get a few posts back to back! you should be just so excited! ;) haha :P 

Jenna and I teach both the Primary and ELE together. In primary we both teach 3 classes 2 times. So we split the kids into 2 groups, the 1^st year in the program kids and the 2^nd year in the program kids. We rotate the kids about every 25 minutes and have a 10 minute opening, closing, and snack time. For the first 2 weeks I taught Shop, Drama, and Gym. At first, it was really hard coming up with lesson plans and it took me forever to write them out. However, now that I just made lesson plans for week 4 of teaching, it has gotten much easier… it’s sometimes just difficult to come up with a good activity that you can get a lot of language out of the kids. Shop it was pretty easy to get them talking. But then, Drama and Gym it is much harder. Drama the first week I couldn’t even get the 

kids to attempt to act out the stories.Finally the second week I got the 2^nd year group to act out three little pigs… obviously, I had to tell them what to do step by step but they started to get the hang of it and they enjoyed telling the Big Bad Wolf to go away and Huffing and Puffing and blowing the house over. With the 1^st year group I just had them do basic things as I read the story because it got to hectic when we tried to act it out. My fist day of teaching was rough! It was really hard and the kids had no idea what I was saying and had no idea that they are suppose to repeat what I am saying. I basically thought I failed at life that day but 2^nd day of teaching went much smoother and I got to see my head teacher, Samantha teach a class for me and that helped me a ton! Now, I have learned that when I am super prepared and know step by step, almost word for word how I want each lesson to go, the classes go by much better. We had to make a strike chart to get the kids to realize that they need to behave and follow the rules. It’s pretty funny when I tell a kid “Keep your hands to yourself” and the other kids start pointing to the strike chart. I try to give 2 warnings before giving a strike and if the kid is just being horrible… which we do have 1 or 2 “devil” children… I send them to Gayla and she sets them straight and they do much better throughout the rest of the lessons. Also in Primary, I think at least one if not two kids end up crying. I don’t know why most of the time… but I feel kinda bad when they leave English class crying… I wonder what their parents think… But, that only happened once, most the time they leave smiling… most the time ;) Now, for the third week I am teaching, Kitchen, Arts and Crafts, and Games. Jenna and I will now switch classes every week. (TopPicture goes from left to right, back row to front row, Erika, Jonathan, Ann, Kiril, Yegor, Maria, and Me.. 2nd picture from left to right goes, Erika, me, Ann, and Eva. ) 

ELE, which I have no idea what ELE stands for, it was… an epic experience. Basically for ELE we go to 2 different schools, one on Tuesday and a different one on Wednesday. We just show up and do whatever the teachers there want us to do. I was super nervous the first day just because I didn’t know what to expect. At the school we go to on Tuesday’s they gave us topics to talk about each week. It’s hard to talk about school supplies for 50 minutes with 2^nd graders who don’t really understand what we are saying half the time. We end up straying off topic to keep the kids interested and speaking English, but I think that as long as they are practicing English it doesn’t matter how long we talk about school supplies for or any topic that they give us. Plus, the director goes in the classes with us and he says we do a good job.. so that’s all that matter right? On Wednesday’s, the teachers at the other school give us like legit lesson plans to follow. One class we talked about prepositions, another different types of sentences and ect. It was much easier on Wednesday because I feel as though I am actually teaching them something instead of just talking about random things. I also do 3 classes on Wednesday instead of just 2 on Tuesday. Also, on Wednesday’s I teach the classrooms by myself whereas on Tuesday’s, Jenna and I teach together. (Picture on the left is of me with the 7th graders at the ELE school i teach on Tuesdays..Picture on the right is of me being such a great teacher... just ignore the random russian written on the board ;) )

Funny things that have happened:

One day, during opening Eva was crying and we were singing wheels on the bus… we got the part where babies go wahhh… anyways, I couldn’t help myself I was like “That’s right Eva, good job”. Jenna, Samantha (she comes every Wednesday to evaluate us and help us), and I all busted up laughing.

Another day, during snack time one of our kids pulled a newspaper out of his backpack, looks at it, and says, “What the hell?”. It took everything in me and Jenna to not laugh.

Yesterday, during kitchen I had the kids help me cut the cheese. After Kiril finished cutting the cheese I had him say “I cut the cheese” and everyone say “he cut the cheese”. I didn’t realize what I had him say until I had him say it and I started to laugh.

We go an Asian kid this week. He’s so freaking cute! Haha anyways, his name is Jonathan, he is Korean, speaks Russian and is in my English class. He is a smart little guy, once we get him to stop crying and join in on the activities. Anyways, yesterday during Arts and Crafts I gave him a light green crayon and as I was talking about crayons I just happened to pull out the dark green crayon, to which he looks at his crayon, looks and mine and exclaims, “There are two green ones, what the heck!” it was so cute! Haha He also likes to say, “Oh my God.” In a sing songy way.

In ELE, a few things made me chuckle. I may be immature for this one but I was talking about pets with one of the classes and a girl told me that he dogs name is Dick. Hahaha okay, sorry. Immature moment over… When I was with the 8^th graders yesterday we were talking about different money phrases and if they agreed or disagreed with the sentences. Well to the sentence, Money can’t buy you love, my group of boys in the back said they disagreed with it because “You can buy a women to give you love… which is called a prostitute.. or prostitution”. These kids are like 13. It was pretty funny though. In another one of my classes, they asked me if I boyfriend. I said yes, and showed them all a picture of Rafael. They then proceeded to ask me, “Do you have child?” It was pretty funny.

Now that we are on the topic of funny things the kids have said to me in English, let me tell you a few things my host dad has said. He always asks us, “do you want cereals” I don’t think he know you just cereal.haha he also asked Jenna and I one day when it was really chilly outside, “Did you froze?” hahah He’s a great guy, who is full of energy and loves having Jenna and I help him speak better English.

Anyways, I’ll end now by saying, I wonder what great things will happen in the up coming weeks of teaching. :)