Two Steps Forward, One Step Back...my students

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back...my students.

More than a few people have been asking me about my day to day life in class with my students. What do I teach them? What are they like? What do I do with my 45 minutes twice a week with these kids?

Well, as this past week has been such a roller coaster with my students (more so than usual even) I decided that it was a good time to talk about my classroom life. I teach 11 groups of kids- usually twice a week; three groups of 5th graders (who I teach only once a week), 2 groups of 6th graders, three groups of 7th graders (one of which I have 3 times a week) and 3 groups of 8th graders. All of these kids are in “specialized” English which means that they have English 5 days a week—as opposed to the standard 3—the extra two lessons a week that make them “specialized” are the lessons they have with me and the rest of the week is with one of the four other Hungarian English teachers.

I am “lucky” by CETP standards (my friends call it lucky, I maintain that it can be a bit of a pain) because I have a curriculum and corresponding textbooks. For each grade level I have a prescribed plan for what topic, page numbers, and exercises I am supposed to do each day. This means—theoretically—that even though the students have two teachers teaching them the same class from the same book we will maintain a flow. The idea being that on Tuesday I can plan to teach lesson 95 which will cover page 42 exercises 4-6 with the assumption that the other teacher has spent Monday going over exercises 1-3. However, more often than my sanity can take, I go into class on Tuesday and the students either have no idea what I’m talking about because haven’t looked at page 42 before and certainly haven’t done the first 3 exercises or they have already finished the exercises and entire lesson that I had planned to do with them that day (I’m starting to dread the words “but Sara this is finished, we did it with Erike-neni yesterday” this of course is only ever revealed after I have spent the first 10 minutes of class introducing the topic.) So yes, maybe I am “lucky” to get a bit of a curriculum, but usually it just ends up pissing me off. I’ve learned to be flexible with this however, and now I know that I just have to be sure to prepare 3 lessons ahead and always start the class by asking if they did the previous days task and go from there.

Anyway, back to the students and my week, a week is a bit much, let’s just look at Friday. I began Friday with my 5th graders- an adorable group of kids, I love my 5th graders, they are small and sweet and always sit in their seats and when I ask “how are you?” at the start of each lesson they respond in a chorus of “I’m fine thanks, and you?” leftover training from a past teacher that I’m trying to break a bit but reluctantly since it is such a relief from the blank and indifferent stares I get from the older students. The 5th graders don’t understand very much so I usually grasp at anything I can get and go with it as long as we’re having some degree of English conversation. This week I started by asking each of the students what they were planning for the weekend and after one student said she was going to the zoo I asked what her favorite animal to see at the zoo was (she likes the penguins), not knowing the word for penguin in English she described it and I wrote penguin on the chalk board and drew and (laughable) penguin cartoon next to the word. The next thing I knew I was drawing every zoo animal these kids could come up with on the board, I had a bit of trouble with the walrus- Akos always throws me curveballs. So the lesson went with the flow of what the kids wanted to talk about and in the end that’s really all I’m supposed to be doing is practicing conversation with them. Eventually I had them each draw a picture of their favorite animal and then write a story about the animal- which was, in fact, the original lesson plan, to practice story writing so it all works out in the end.
Next I had class 8. Class 8 is my nightmare. I actually don’t mind 8b, there are some very nice kids, a few troublemakers but generally a great group of kids. 8a however, is a different story. I have two groups of 8a- all of my classes are actually just half a regular class, 15 instead of 30. Even only having 15 8a students at a time is still the worst part of my day. In Hungary the students have to apply for secondary schools which means that a second semester 8th grader is no different then a second semester senior in high school- serious senioritis- they are the oldest in school and too cool for everything and have already applied for secondary school so nothing they do this semester affects what school they get in to. In this class I usually spend a large amount of my time trying to get the kids to get out their books, open their books, find a pencil, take their headphones out (those little iPod buds are my new nemesis) or put away their cell phones. It has come to the point where when the students are mocking me, doing impressions of me, they just point, look pissed of and say “put it away!” These are just the routine behavioral problems with 8a, there is the star of 8a, Csaba, who has done a lot to improving my Hungarian when it comes to obscenities and when he really wants to prove how cool he is he takes out his boot polish, throws his big Soviet army boots up on his desk and polishes them! Csaba has, of course, a sidekick, Istvan who last week jumped out the window with the excuse that Petra (the class flirt) had thrown his pen outside. So this is 8a. Proof that 14 year olds are 14 year olds no matter what language they speak. What made this week special however was that one of the other English teachers was out sick so all week I had both groups of 8a, all 30 of them at once, everyday! The climax came on Friday when their form master (home room teacher) had to come in and sit in the back of the room with her grade book so that they would behave. A plus because they did actually sit still and do their work but a negative for me because I now have confirmation on what I had speculated all along but have been in denial about- the students really are just hat bad for me- it’s not them it is, in fact, me.
But the nightmare of 8a was quickly wiped away when I entered my class 7. I have 3 groups of seventh graders and they are all fantastic! They’re enthusiastic and like to participate and they’re smart and understand that some days we have to do boring book work and learn grammar rules but that if we get through them we get to learn Beatles’ songs and play games. Class 7 fights for turns to tell me about their weekend, about their swim meet or how they won the table tennis tournament or how they’re now ranked 5th in the nation in Snooker- for adults- at age 12! Class 7 got major props for Friday’s lesson which involved reading a long and complicated text about the family history of Mary Queen of Scots and the royal lineage involving her and Henry VIII all in order to practice non-defining relative clauses such as “James V, who was Mary’s father, died when Mary was only one week old.” Not only did class 7 do the assignment without complaining but the understood it and managed to complete the family tree that explains why Lady Jane Grey was briefly Queen- these kids are clever! (well the family tree was mostly Zsofia and Zsu Zsi- give credit where credit is due!)
This week 7b even asked if I would stay after school with them because they wanted to practice their dance routine (for some upcoming school event) and needed a teacher to supervise them in the classroom after school hours. The fact that they asked me might just mean that they know I am one of the only ones who doesn’t have to go home and cook dinner for my kids but I prefer to see it as them considering me a teacher- no different from the other teachers at the school, with equal authority and responsibility (but cool enough to help them learn the words to Thriller). On top of this Vera, one of my best students from 7a invited me to go bowling with her and a few friends and her visiting cousin who wanted to practice his English.
So:

8a: one step back
but…
Bowling with 7a: one step forward
Helping 7b with Thriller dance: one step forward
(I’m still coming out ahead)