First Lessons

Whelp, this time I have no pictures! If there is a great disparity between experience and photographs, I don't think the lack of the latter bodes ill for this trip.

It is now officially July and that means lessons are underway. If I didn't explain this already (I probably should have made the point to, eh?), my excuse reason for gallivanting around Poland is a month-long ESL teaching program. This first week I work with adults in individual, one on one lessons, two or three hours at a time. In the coming weeks I will work with a classroom of children, ages 6-8. For my very last week I will go camping (the kind with cabins and grill stations and water sports. You know, rugged camping!) with kids from size munchkin to teenager. Besides an amazing opportunity, a humbling experience, and fancy ice breaker in airport lounges, teaching abroad is hard. Harder, in fact, than I expected it to be.

I suspect the adults will be the most difficult, because adults are more resistant, hesitant, and self-conscious. Kids will eat vegetables so long as they are hidden inside macaroni and cheese. Adults will ask for organic kale and radish salad with a squeeze of unseeded lemon and proclaim throughout the whole meal that they're watching their weight. Adults are afraid of more things than children are: they're afraid of looking and sounding silly, they're afraid of failing, they're afraid of wasting their money and time, they're afraid of nuclear winter, they're afraid of the food on their plates. The truth about adults is that they need as much patience and tenderness as children, but if they catch wind of any kind of patronizing they will crumple in defeat.

As if you're expected to know anything when you walk into a classroom.

Oh snap, that's my job. Yikes.

My first student was  very sweet but very self conscious, with no faith in herself whatsoever. She wanted to depend entirely on the textbook and said at the end of the class she wanted to get through at least 20 units. We spent the first hour and a half in discussion and maybe half an hour on the prepared units. I don't think she noticed that her English opened up fluidly when she was just talking, but the units scared the daylights from her and she got nervous and more slippery. Regardless, she wants the books. They feel like progress for her. My second student was sharp as a tack who declared after half an hour that the units were boring, so we broke into discussion. She is slightly behind in English compared to the first, but so much more confident that she flies through conversation.

For today, all-new lessons for the second student, and nothing but units for the first.

Oh, and baking an apple pie. We'll see how that goes.