Today was my first day of teaching. I’ve never felt so unprepared. Basically my daily routine is as follows; wake up at about 7am to the sound of Natasha cooking and yelling at Anya (my room is right next to the kitchen). I hurry off into the bathroom across the hall and get ready. After that at some point, I am called to breakfast. One thing I am realizing is that, you never serve yourself. For some odd reason, at every meal so far, they serve me twice as much as everyone else. Of course I feel horrible if I don’t eat everything.. so I try my hardest. Then Natasha asks me if I am ready to go, well I am assuming.. its in Russian, but my guessing has proved right so far, so I’ll stick with that. The drive to school seems to be taking about a half hour, even though I’m pretty sure its just a few blocks away, but because of traffic, we go around town.
I got to the school and met up with the other girls and we began training. A lot of it was review and we spent most of our time just chatting. I love these girls! It was decided that Anna (abba) and I would be teaching elementary level. Elementary is basically real school with planned lessons, not like with kindergarden, which you basically just play. This scared me. Anna and I had no idea what to do. Our school did not have all the books and teacher manuals required so finally we decided just to wing it the first day. Oh boy, was that a mistake.
Class started at 3, the kids started coming in way early, so that put more pressure on us. I was teaching first. I was hoping that my hidden “teacher instincts” would kick in at some point.. if I had any.. I was hoping countless hours in my mom’s class would instill SOMETHING in me..
My first class was level 4. All boys, ages 10 & 11. Needless to say it was rough. Slavic is the kid I can already tell that I am going to hate to love and love to hate. He is so stinkin cute but has an attitude.
Here is where we meet Oksana; our native coordinator. She is over our program at school and helps out with our host family situations and well, she is basically out tour guide. She is also over all of the discipline at school. These kids fear her. Oksana is one of the most gorgeous Ukrainian I have ever seen. She is about 5'9, long blonde hair, and always equipped with a mini skirt and six inch heels. Looks are deceiving. This woman can stop trains and make grown men cry. She is kinda my hero;)
Anyway, Slavic's cell phone went off in class.. What ten year old has a cell phone.. well, iphone, in Ukraine! So on my first day of teaching I unleashed the wrath of Oksana and made a ten year old boy cry. Awesome.
The rest of the class was not horrible, but after they saw what I could do to one boy, they were much more clam. Lets hope they stay like that. I have a good feeling about it now. After class, Bogdan came up to me and told me he had made me a present. It was the sweetest thing! I almost felt like crying when he held up a little tin foil heart, just for me! Rough day, turned sweet. Well, we are off to find the institute so we can go to fhe!
Toodles!
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| Hard at work..hahah |
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