Recounting Rus: 20-21.09.07 - The end of the first week of teaching

One of the schools where I teach (the other one looks very similar).

20.09.07: So I thought I was pretty familiar with what I had planned to teach this day... I went in to the office to find some additional activities and realized as usual I was not at all prepared to be teaching. I thought that the lesson I was going to teach for my high schoolers would be pretty interesting but one of them was not there so with three students it was impossible to get discussions going. I also hadn’t calculated my teaching time as well so had a lot of time at the end; I had planned on playing “Irregular Past Tense Bingo” but again it didn’t take up as much time as I thought. I had the students write about something that interests them for next class so hopefully with that information I can plan some better lessons. In the time between classes the teacher that regularly teaches in my classroom came in; she is the school’s English teacher. I talked with her a bit about teaching and such and she as well wanted to hear me say something in Russian for some reason. I said a few things and then she asked me where I was from and she conveniently has a map on the wall so I was able to show her. She asked me a few things about the weather and somehow turned to the subject of communists. (I think she said something about lots of Americans being communist.) So I told her that I wasn’t and she said that communists are sh** several times and a little quieter said that the head of the school is a communist. After this conversation I started looking over the next class’ lesson and realized that I was hardly familiar with the material... I had about fifteen minutes to review. Thankfully these are my best students so it wasn’t a huge problem. However, I had to try to explain the difference between the present perfect and present perfect progressive which I failed to do. I did remember to go to the examples when I was faltering but I still don’t know if they understood the difference (I still don’t know if I understand the difference for that matter). A new girl joined the class tonight so I was happy about that-now we can have pair work. She seems a little behind the others in comprehension but I think part of the problem was just nervousness. After class I ended up walking to the metro with the new student so we talked a little bit about what she does. One week of teaching down - 30 some more to go...

21.09.07: Today was a day that I was to have planned all my lessons for next week. I got quite a bit done-general outlines of what I’m teaching-but it took all day and I still need to find activities and “warmers” as they call them (games for the beginning of the class). I also still have no idea what to do in my advanced teen class. The first problem is that the book I have to use is different than the ones we used in training and than I have for every other class except elementary. The book is mostly based on reading with little grammar points thrown in every chapter. One of the teacher trainers showed me a webpage where there are topics for discussions so hopefully that will help. I finally had a list of all the grammar points I am to teach next week and a general idea of all the lessons so I went in to the office to find materials but only had about an hour before I was to meet a friend to go to Red Square. I found a few good activities but have to go in on Saturday to finish. So the exchange rate for dollars has been really low all week so I had been waiting to change money until it went back up, but it hadn’t by yesterday so I took some money to exchange at a place by the office which usually has the best rate. Well, the odd thing about changing money is that they usually won’t accept bills that have any sort of marking on them-the bills I had that day weren’t in the best condition (I had planned on changing those particular bills at a place by my house which had accepted such bills before). I went to three different exchanges and a bank and no one would take them... One of them offered to accept them for a lower rate (which doesn’t make sense to me...). So back to Red Square... I met my friend after these shenanigans and we walked around the square a bit and in a few neighbourhoods around there for a few hours looking at churches and various buildings.

A Church on the corner of Red Square.

The Historical Mueseum.

As close as I will get to Lenin's body...

A Baptist church.

The Church to which Konstantine Kinchev, the leader of the band Alisa, attends. (He lives around the corner in an apartment complex from which we were chased out of by the security guard.)