(no subject)
Okay. I am a qualified TEFL teacher. I can officially teach English as a foreign language. This took four intense weeks of emotional highs and lows, all based around actual teaching practice. My proudest moment was demonstrating the meaning of "coastline" by drawing a line with "land" on one side and "sea" on the other, labeling the line as what the offending word meant. That may be a bit lame, but my tutor referred to it directly in his notes on that lesson and it was unplanned, as opposed to the grammar I was teaching in that lesson. Anyway.
I qualified and started filling in forms for jobs in teaching all over the world. For some reason I was especially attracted to Eastern Europe. Perhaps because I've met people from there, but also because it's a place I haven't been and don't know much about that isn't totally alien. Hence the interview from a school in Koszalin, a place purportedly clean, green and in the far north of Poland. Also hence the information given to me that I've been given the job and I start Wednesday. My flight is in the early morning of Sunday. Things are moving fast.
Maaaan. I love this but it's all so fast. I'm actually teaching properly next week. For ninety minutes when the longest lesson I've taught has been an hour. And to stay sane I have to cut down my lesson planning to about half the actual time the lesson takes, rather than taking three hours for forty minutes in front of a classroom. This is going to be tough, and I have no interactive whiteboard to entertain me (have you seen these things? Such a toy! You know teachers only use them because they're fascinated by getting them to work at all).
Coupled to that are worries about going to an entirely different country and learning their language while I'm teaching mine. Luckily Polish lessons are free, but I need to quickly learn "hello", "thankyou", and "a beer please" to be able to function properly, and it's another new culture I'm exposing myself to with very little prior preparation. For example, sofa-beds are considered the norm in Poland. So the flat I end up in might not have a proper bed (Or bedroom? I'm not sure). Also, I don't work well with cold. My hands turn blue with a mildly aggressive wind. I need to wrap up warm for anything below 20 degrees centigrade. As the winter goes on this may be a significant problem.
The most horrible wrench may be a possible disconnection from the internets. There has been very little discussion of this during accommodation talks, so I may not be able to stalk LJ friends as effectively as before. Not that more than two of people I actually know post regularly. With my sporadic updates I am not one to complain, but still.
It's good to vent.
I qualified and started filling in forms for jobs in teaching all over the world. For some reason I was especially attracted to Eastern Europe. Perhaps because I've met people from there, but also because it's a place I haven't been and don't know much about that isn't totally alien. Hence the interview from a school in Koszalin, a place purportedly clean, green and in the far north of Poland. Also hence the information given to me that I've been given the job and I start Wednesday. My flight is in the early morning of Sunday. Things are moving fast.
Maaaan. I love this but it's all so fast. I'm actually teaching properly next week. For ninety minutes when the longest lesson I've taught has been an hour. And to stay sane I have to cut down my lesson planning to about half the actual time the lesson takes, rather than taking three hours for forty minutes in front of a classroom. This is going to be tough, and I have no interactive whiteboard to entertain me (have you seen these things? Such a toy! You know teachers only use them because they're fascinated by getting them to work at all).
Coupled to that are worries about going to an entirely different country and learning their language while I'm teaching mine. Luckily Polish lessons are free, but I need to quickly learn "hello", "thankyou", and "a beer please" to be able to function properly, and it's another new culture I'm exposing myself to with very little prior preparation. For example, sofa-beds are considered the norm in Poland. So the flat I end up in might not have a proper bed (Or bedroom? I'm not sure). Also, I don't work well with cold. My hands turn blue with a mildly aggressive wind. I need to wrap up warm for anything below 20 degrees centigrade. As the winter goes on this may be a significant problem.
The most horrible wrench may be a possible disconnection from the internets. There has been very little discussion of this during accommodation talks, so I may not be able to stalk LJ friends as effectively as before. Not that more than two of people I actually know post regularly. With my sporadic updates I am not one to complain, but still.
It's good to vent.