Carol Bontekoe

This blog has been keeping track of my adventures since 2004. The stories and the adventures have come from my college dorm room to Uganda, Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan, learning Dutch in the Netherlands to living in the wilds of Homer, Alaska. I went back to school in Amsterdam to study Theaterwetenschap (Theatre Science) at University of Amsterdam. And now my adventures as a Fruit Fly, a Sexy Unicorn, and creating a movement with Team Sparkle in Chicago.

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Teaching

My students and I link arms. We start walking down a path. Slowly the walk turns into a skip. Then eventually we pick up the pace and start running. All laughing, talking having a great time. We eventually reach a field where we start dancing around, totally free of a care in the world. Then pink bunnies with magical wands come in and join us. They wave their wands around my students and they magically speak English(kind of a mother willow in Pochantas..thing.) We all have a great time speaking fluent English, giggling, and there is defiantly cake. Isn't this what teaching is like?ISN'T IT?ISNTIT?It has to be like that.IT. HAS. TO. BE.IT! HAS! TO! BE!I mean this is what I was thinking teaching would be like. I started teaching today. I'm going to have revise how much I thought I could teach these kids in two years. The problem with all of our training is most of it focused on how to teach grammar. I have booklet after booklet about grammar. Me? I have to teach the alphabet, the SOUNDS of the alphabet, Greetings... maybe I'll get around to animals. I have abosolutely no base. Today I had only two classes. The 6a class was alright. Small, relatively well behaved.A couple students that actually wanna learn. I also had 3a. There were about 10 too many students for my amount of desks and chair(not too mention space) none of them see the benefit of learning English and have no desire to do so. So, me and a room full of eight year olds this was the majority of class.(translated from Russian to English for your benefit)SIT DOWN!NO! I said write it on the inside! No, now be quiet!Quiet!I can't read that!Your Fir... BE QUIET! FIRST NAME Than your... QUIET!!! Last name!!!no,no,no,no.justshutup (queitly said under my breathe in English)OKAY NO ONE GETS TO USE THE TIOLET!SIT! DOWN!QUIET!yeah... Defiantly going to have to approach that group a little differently than maybe my 6th form. Don't these kids understand teaching isn't easy and their bad behavior isn't helping any. I mean I'm sure I was a perfectly quiet student who sat there and understood everything the teacher said, because I paid attention when s/he spoke. I was helpful and quietly explained what to do to any of the children who might not have heard everything. I instantly knew everything the teacher said and responded to questions with a single hand raise. Yep, That was me as a student. My memory of that time period might be a little fuzzy, but I'm sure that is what I was like. I wouldn't want to cause any unnessary stress for the teacher. I was a perfect student. At least that is how I remember it.

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