I have survived the first part of practice school with 6th grade. Part 2 starts on Thursday this time with 10th grade…Which means I have the rest of today and all day tomorrow to in a way relax…although I still have meetings and sessions but no actual teaching.
Practice school was awesome altogether but it gradually became better as I started to feel more comfortable teaching English and more comfortable with the students. Even lesson planning was getting easier the last few days…however the sad part is that I will have to start back at square one Thursday because I think planning a lesson for 6th is going to be as different from planning a lesson for 10th as planning a lesson for English was instead of for History. Mostly because the I have to stretch 5 lessons to fit around 14 classes and because the texts are a lot more difficult in the tenth grade book, covering such topics as analyzing why students do poorly in school, the educational system of the UK in comparison to the US, and with vocab words such as obsolete, impoverish, ruse, and stint to name just a few. But enough about next week…Lets talk about today.
Today was basically our party day with our gymnasium students and it was awesome. There was only a slight bit of seriousness as I had to turn back to them their test they took on Monday. (More on that in the next paragraph.) After reviewing the test I taught the students how to play hangman, say English tongue twisters, play musical chairs and how to dance the Macarena, the Hokey Pokey, and the Cha Cha Slide…(Yes, before you ask. In order to teach them how, I also had to engage in the dancing, however, I consider this a one time occurrence and I plan on restricting any and all of my future dancing to this and other foreign countries.) I was pretty surprised because at the end I asked them what they enjoyed the most and they each liked something different. Nothing in particular was their favorite. This was surprising because it meant that I had done a good job picking activities that would appeal to each of my students. I might also add that I saw numerous students either playing hangman or dancing the Macarena after class. I think I can say that this week and especially today I have been extremely successful with goal 2 of the Peace Corps. And hopefully as long as people keep reading my blog I will also continue to be successful with goal 3 as well.
Going back to test taking, students in Moldova are a lot of fun to watch when they are taking a test because they feel no shame in leaning over and checking out their neighbors paper or asking, in a voice that is edging slightly louder than a whisper, about the answer to question number 5, "helping" is a noble aspect of Moldovan culture but for every positive there is a negative. I spent most of the time during the test reminding students not to talk and to keep their eyes on their own paper…sometimes in Romanian just to be sure they understood. However, even with the rampant academic dishonesty I feel the grades from the test still accurately reflected the grades I thought the students should have received. Especially when it came to the last part which was an essay that required students to describe their favorite season. Some students did not write anything, most said summer because there is no school, but my favorite was a girl who wrote an essay that took up the whole back page and described how spring was her favorite because the trees were in blossom, people are happy, and that she is proud that she is able to be this happy and experience this season if only once a year. Her English is probably better than mine and at one point her essay even uses the phrase "kidnaps my soul." If I hadn't been watching her the entire time I never would have believed that a 6th grade student could write such a beautiful description of a season. Especially a student who speaks another language. (At this point I really wish I could rewrite the whole essay for everyone to read, however, I gave her back her test already. But I invited her to join my 10th grade class on Thursday because she is above and beyond capable and I will ask her if I can see her test again. That is if she decides to give up more of her vacation to come to my English class with older teenagers…)
The weirdest part of teaching the 6th grade this week has been the fact that all of my students remind me of the 6th grade class I student taught in the US only two months before I left for Moldova. I was in a constant state of deja vous because I could swear that each of them had an American twin. One student in particular because he not only looked identical to a student from the US but also had all of the student's mannerisms. When he didn't know the answer he smiled the same way the other student did, when something was funny he laughed the same way, and when he was bored he was just as easily distracted and entertained himself in the exact same way. It was so bizarre. But also very entertaining.
Lastly, as if being finished with the first part of practice school wasn't enough of a reward I also received three roses, an apple, a paper with pictures of two of the girls with their signatures and a book with each students name, a picture, and a written message. It was amazing…(and that was the first time I wrote amazing in this blog post. and I didn't use it at all in the last blog post. Unusual.)
My gifts.
My class with my amazing resource teacher.
My class with me.
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