Challenges

I wanted to sit down and write about some of the things in my school/Ukraine that make teaching effectively a challenge. I'm sure I will encounter more as the school year goes on, but here's what I've currently been thinking about.

The schedule constantly changes. It is now the fourth full week of school, and there are still changes being made. I asked a student how often it will continue to change. His response, "Every week, of course!" I think he finds my bewilderment amusing. While I find it annoying and obnoxious that the schedule of lessons is never for sure, and that sometimes I'm not told when there are changes, it's also really confusing for my kids. They come into class late or unprepared, without their book or notebook, because they didn't know the schedule changed and didn't know they had English that day. It just makes it harder to get them into a routine where they know they have to bring which books to school on what day, and have their homework done.

I'm not sure what the situation with books is. My school ordered new books for a few of the forms this year, which were late to arrive of course, but there are still many, many students without books. For some forms, it seems like the school ordered a set number of copies that was supposed to guarantee every child a book, while in others I'm under the impression that students were told they had to purchase their own books. So of course, the parents who are already involved in their child's education dutifully bought the book. The parents who are not so involved, didn't. Then there are the set of children whose families are too poor to buy the book, or the book and the accompanying workbook, thus making it harder for those kids to get a good education and help them escape poverty. It's also fairly awkward because I'm in a village and there is no privacy about anything for these kids, so everyone knows exactly who didn't buy the book because their family simply can't.

I'm fairly certain that I'm not considered a real teacher by anyone in my school except my non-counterpart English teacher. And I think that's only because she hasn't actually seen me teach. Because I don't make kids memorize passages and recite them, regardless of whether they know what they're saying or not, I am not legitimate. I let them get up and move - gasp! It's blasphemous, I know. I've been observing the second form this past week, and I find it wildly strange that a group of 7 to 8 year-olds are made to sit straight and still for about 50 minutes.

Speaking of the second form, I also find it completely overwhelming that they're learning the block letters of English, the cursive letters, AND the transcription symbols of sounds, simultaneously [for example, æ and ɔ]. They're also learning Ukrainian and Russian. It just seems very ineffective to put so much emphasis on that, while actually being able to read simple words gets pushed aside.

I'm about to start teaching with my non-cp English teacher. She's very nice to me, but she's also been teaching for 40 years and very set in her ways. She tightly controls everything that happens in her classroom and anything that deviates from that is bad. She wanted me to ask students questions about a text they read, and instead she ended up saying the question to me, which I then repeated to the students, even though they heard her say it first, because I wasn't asking exactly what she wanted. I'm not there for a teacher to dictate to me exactly what I'm supposed to do, I'm supposed to teach the way language teachers in the U.S. teach, a.k.a. the communicative method. I feel like this is going to be a fight.

When I was got to site last December, my school gave me a little room to serve as an office on the third floor. It was really nice for me to have a place to go between classes, plan lessons, and store materials. I also give my individual lessons there. As of this week, I will no longer have that room as it's being given to another (new?) teacher. I will be moving into the room of my non-cp English teacher, which isn't really a big deal. I just wonder logistically how this will work out. There's only one key to this room, which she has, and I don't think we're always at school at the same time. I know she has Wednesdays completely off. I'm anticipating being mostly displaced and finding weird little corners to sit in and work, and having to carry around everything that I need. I don't know what I'm going to do about individual lessons yet/where they will take place now. While the weather is nice, I can do walk-and-talks with my older students but that's only going to last until November, maybe December. I live close enough to my school that I could, in theory, have them at my house. But to be quite honest, I really, really, really don't want to do that. I consider my house the one place in Ukraine that is my judgment-free, safe haven. I don't have to worry about being judged constantly or having kids giggle at the sight of me, or people staring at me, or whispering about every little thing that I do. I don't want to lose the sanity that it provides me.

Also, my counterpart and I don't really speak. Ever. It's awkward. I'm fairly certain she strongly dislikes me. Why, you may ask? I don't know. She's had that attitude towards me ever since she retrieved me from Kyiv after I was sworn in. The only thing I've come up with is that it's because I'm young and American, and the kids in my school think my lessons are more interesting than hers.

The good thing right now about teaching is that it doesn't have quite the same effect on me that it used to. There were days last year where I could physically feel my stress level in my chest as it grew, and I'd get upset about things. Now, I just get this weird feeling of flatness. I don't know how else to describe it. I think it's partly that I know what to expect and I'm also being wildly proactive about managing my stress by running, journaling, and having a routine. I don't know what else to do.