Blog 8 Teaching…what????

Ah the children…my students…or as I am beginning to think, miniature ‘attila the huns’ !!! But I digress….

The very nice owner of the Language School looked at me at our last meeting and said, “what could go wrong”? And foolishly I repeated, ‘yes what could go wrong’??? I googled everything I could think of regarding teaching English to junior high Italian students…alas it left out the key chapter called ‘Survival’.

The novelty of an American instructor wore off fairly quickly. Needless to say I could not remember their names – obviously a few stand out. And let me state for the record I have watched too many detective mysteries. Bear that thought in mind. I am sharing information on America and trying to assess how well they can speak and understand English. During the meager assessment period, I notice one young man with a sheet of white paper, some powdery substance and moving it as if chopping it with a small metal ruler…and immediately what would you surmise? Yes…impossible. (cocaine stuff – it wasn’t, of course). Knowing this was not happening, I continued to watch this kid and his neighbor. The neighbor whom I shall not name, was casually walking around the back of the room and picking up particles of the plaster wall while his buddy was chopping them up. Making a fine powdery material. Where is this going? Then it all came together…the leader of this experiment had a bottle of water and a plastic cup. He was making a plaster mixture and then subtly patching holes in the walls. Now I wasn’t born yesterday but what????? He seemed very focused on this patching process and when I asked him to sit down and not do this, he took his time and patched at least 4 more holes on his way to his seat. Not big holes, but…when I turned my back, he was at it again. I was trying not to laugh and lose control of the class but too late. The class would shortly take over and I was a wanderer in a sea of 13 yr olds who heard nothing and the noise level was extraordinary. Oh the little darlings…

Needless to say, I was so ready for a good or bad bottle of wine. As I walked home, I contemplated teaching. It appears that teaching that age group is 1/3 teaching and 2/3rds crowd control. I remembered being that age, the Beatles had just arrived and at Jennings Junior High School in Akron, Ohio, we went wild!!! But I don’t remember any class getting so loud and out of control. What happens tomorrow????

Luckily the first two classes today were young kids and taking some advice from my daughter, I found a great animated movie in English and it played excellently on their SmartBoard. Each classroom has them. SmartBoards work off a PC Laptop. Being an Apple girl, a bit challenging but the kids were ready to step in and make it work. We played a word game in English. They truly are amazing with technology. So the morning rolled easily and then the last class (all classes are 2 hours). Ah more 13 yr olds. Fluent to a good degree, but a few not remotely interested in what is going on. Ugh. We talked about America, a huge question which garnered much attention, do Americans put pineapple on their pizzas? I had to confess some do. Do I ? Absolutely not! Is Italian pizza better? Of course, everything in Italy is better. They seemed to like that. But the gasps on the pineapple made me laugh. Then onto English, different discussions on the English alphabet and the Italian alphabet – different, then we went straight to a movie called appropriately “Thirteen”. I had severe doubts any of them were actually watching. So I came up with a short Quiz on the movie. I had made it clear that we spoke English only at the beginning of each class. However they shared information in Italian…very low voices. And to my surprise, they were watching and most had all the answers.

With a 2 hours class, there have to be breaks…some seemed to be lost and came back quite a bit late. With the afternoon classes, they have a quick food break before 2pm and at 2pm, they have lunch. It seemed pizza was the main food group and they were walking around eating it like we do potato chips.

With more time to figure out how to get their attention and possibly slow down the growing commotion, I played a few songs, Ed Sheeran and Andre Bocelli, then Taylor Swift…they watched intently…and then had a song they wanted – a Snowman song which was cute …and the girls sang along with it quite loudly. They ended the singing time slot with some crazy Spanish song that only 6 of them knew and sang pretty loud. Long story short…I am glad to help, but I am not remotely qualified. I bow to all the teachers who manage these kids and feel they actually get through to them. I am sure they do, me? I need a few pointers on crowd control and maybe a whistle. I feel like I will be rethinking how long I will help … they need someone far more knowledgeable than myself.

They have vending machines on each level of the school. One is coffee choices and the other has water and snacks. They can have water bottles at their desks. Bathrooms have no seats and as I learned, the roll of toilet tissue on the teacher’s desk was because they kept finding the rolls in the toilets. I am hoping tomorrow can be my last day. I need a vacation.

Want to know when the next adventure is ready? Sign up here!!!