It is said that a new year should bring something new into life of a man (in my case woman:). Before 2010, usually nothing had changed in the following year, but this new year is different. My lazy life at school is gone. I started to teach three 5th grade kids to write and read Latin letters (after 2,5 years of English it’s a bit sad story), two teachers Czech language a this week I will start to teach English some teachers.
I have always thought that teaching one’s mother tongue must be incredibly difficult. Well, maybe if one doesn‘t have any textbook or didn’t pay attention at their Czech lessons. What I am trying to say is that teaching Czech works incredibly well. One of the teachers I am teaching, she’s got an old Bulgarian-Czech textbook which is a good source for grammar rules and I borrowed one Czech textbook Viktor downloaded which is an awesome inspiration for speaking. Moreover, everyone is so motivated (well, Viktor doesn’t look very happy every morning he has to get up and go there :), does their homework...just like a dream in that jungle.
In contrast to well-working Czech lessons is English for teachers. It was supposed to be a team-teaching with Matt, but unfortunately neither of the teachers showed up at the first and second lesson. A bit disappointing but maybe also expected.
Teaching reading and writing Latin letter to those three kids is probably one of the biggest challenges I have ever take. The gang consists of two girls (one is really nice and trying to do something and she is probably the only one who makes any progress, the other one is always talking, touching me and I would call her Little Miss I Know Everything Better Than You Do) and one hyperactive boy who obviously has troubles with even Bulgarian letters. Each of them needs individual approach because they’re definitely not on the same level, but it’s damn difficult to pay attention to only one and make the other to work on something, because each of them wants 100% of my attention.
Every lesson they got wilder, noisier and less obedient pretending they don’t understand my (almost) perfect Bulgarian. I started to be a bit desperate, because it’s me and I don’t give up on any challenge, but it started to be unbearable. The night before Thursday I couldn’t sleep and had to think what to do with those three monkeys, because it was not possible to keep on like that.
On Thursday morning, I asked one of my Czech students for some phrases in Bulgarian and wrote them down next to my lesson plan. I also goggled some activities I could do with the alphabet. The game could begin. I asked the students for their Бележник (student’s book) and because they had no idea what was going on, they gave it to me. After that I told them, if they misbehaved I would give them 2 (the worst grade here) and if they were about to be good, I would give them stickers. (I couldn’t say that before because they would tell me they don’t have their Бележник) This was followed by one girl stealing the Бележници from my table (which is kind of a public place for the kids, but I really don’t like them being around it). I use here lots techniques learnt at uni about assertiveness, so she was forced to give them back to me. Well, all in all, the lesson went really well. Each kid got two stickers, it seemed they never get anything good from their teachers, because they were showing me their stickers repeating: „Look, I have two stickers.“ Maybe what’s even more important, I managed to keep them busy and interested. :) The question is how long the trick with Бележник will work, because I am not allowed to write in it and probably there are not so many activities for keeping the gang busy.
