the life of a soon-to-be teacher

Apologies for the long absence… we seriously hit the ground running our first day and we haven’t slowed down a bit since.  My day generally goes like this: At school at 9 to look up any grammar questions, find supplemental exercises for my lessons, practice my white board plan for the lesson, and ask any last minute questions.  Then we have class from 10-1:30 where either Dan or Terry, teach us one grammar lesson and then a lesson on a specific teaching topic (i.e. how to use video, teaching kids, using phonetics to help your students, preparing students for exams, etc.)  Then we have lunch and either you go work on your lesson plan for the next day or go teach with your team of 3.  Each person is responsible for a 45 minute lesson that all together makes up 1 cohesive lesson of reading, writing, listening and speaking for the students.  I lucked out immensely and have 2 wonderful people in my group.  Elaine is a lovely lady from Ireland who does a fantastic job in the classroom as well as in the pub.  Joep (pronounced Yoop) is a goofy guy from Holland who loves nothing more than a good board plan that is beautifully color coordinated.  I have absolutely loved getting to know them both and I’m lucky to be able to teach with them twice a week :) 

After teaching you evaluate your fellow teammates and then wait to receive feedback from 1 of the teachers (either Dan, Terry or 2 girls who work for TEFL) who at the time feel like they are the ultimate judges of your ability to be a teacher and a respectable human being.   They always give wonderfully constructive feedback and the way they manage to soften the blows with seemingly sincere positive comments is something I will forever appreciate.   Then you get home around 7, with your assignment for the next class, which is the day after next.  I have mainly taught every Tuesday and Thursday and have taught every level- elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, and upper intermediate… all interesting, some much more successful than others.  Upper intermediate was the least intimidating and the first, then came the stone cold Czheskies of intermediate and I managed both my highest high and then my lowest low with elementary, and next week I’m onto pre-intermediate.

On top of that we have our one-to-one lessons with a Czech student.  (This is a different  story all together.  My student is Jarka, a mid 60s retiree with a lazy eye.  Amazing).  We meet 3 different times for 1 hour each and have to hand in a 10 page paper at the end of the course that covers our student’s needs assessment, strengths, weaknesses, what we worked on and how, and their general ability/ level of everything from grammar to pronunciation to range of lexis.  Annnd we have a grammar presentation each week that we give in front of our fellow classmates- which is even more terrifying for me than the actual lessons with Czech students.  Oh, and we have a grammar test the last week of the class that we all attempted in the beginning of the course.  I kid you not when I say that not a single person could finish half a page and I answered “past participle” too many times to count because that’s one of the only “grammar terms” I could remember from high school Spanish class.  

So needless to say, things have been a bit hectic :) While I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m immensely overwhelmed, stressed out, sleep deprived and emotionally pooped out, I’d also be lying if I didn’t say that I’m having the time of my life.  It’s been an indescribable challenge every step of the way and I don’t think I will ever be able to put into words how much I have learned; about myself and grammar, equally :) I feel unjustifiably lucky to be in this position again- where I know I’m in the right place, taking lessons from passionate people, and learning how to become, hopefully!, a good teacher.