Chapter 4 - Life as a teacher

Long ago when I was about 7-8 years old, I remember very clearly a day when Katie Groke and I were playing "pretend", one of our favorite games. Rather than being model homemakers and mothers as most other little girls were pretending to be, Katie and I decided even back then to be professionals. She was a doctor, typing up a diagnosis and prescription on my old-school Toshiba laptop. And I was a teacher. Through the subsequent years my career goals came and went, from teacher to actress to politician to global peace-maker. But it seems I’ve come full circle now and am starting right where Katie and I left off - as a teacher.

I have to admit that when I first arrived and another Katie - Kate my boss - started detailing lesson plans and grammar points to be covered my heart leapt into my throat. Not from excitement of fulfilling a life-long dream, but from sheer dread realizing that I really have no idea what I’m doing or how I got here! However after a full month and a half of trial and error I believe I’ve gotten the basic hang of things and my classes seem to enjoy themselves which is always a good sign! Another good result from all this is that I’m finally learning about English grammar myself. Something I seemed to have missed out on when I was in school.

As for the details of my teaching, I have one class that is mine alone to teach. There are technically 8 students but usually only about 5 or 6 show up. They are at the upper intermediate stage so that means they understand most everything I say and have a good command of the language. I teach them three times a week for 2 hours, other than that I go and visit other teacher’s classes and act as an audio aid - a.k.a. "the native speaker". Also since I arrived I’ve had the great responsibility to be substituting the other American’s classes, one conversation group and another upper intermediate class. It’s been a great challenge - "battlefield experience" as Kate called it - and a lot of fun to get to know the students, and learning as I go how to teach them. Luckily I have a Coloradan accent which is much clearer to understand whereas the other American is from Minnesota and has a lisp as well. This has helped to ingratiate me to the students and covered up the fact I’m clueless about clauses, the ‘third form’ of verbs, and present perfect continuous tense.

Classes will end in June for the summer and then I’ll be doing mostly summer conversation groups and going to the summer camp in the Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea heavily fought over throughout the centuries and Ukrainians’ favorite holiday retreat. I’ll be there for about 10-20 days depending on how many camps I go to. It will be lots of fun and hard work but I’m really looking for to it! Also I’ll be starting some private lessons as well to supplement my meager income. Now that means I’ll have to learn how to teach one-on-one, as if I didn’t have enough challenges! Well back to the grind, have to work my way through this wide, intriguing world.