Developing A Routine

Well, I just finished the first week at school that I think represents a “regular” week. I met with all my partner teachers at the times we had scheduled. The class schedule hasn’t changed in 2 weeks, and I taught all the classes I was expecting to teach at the time I was expecting to teach them. I could predict when the bell would ring. It was nice feeling like I knew what was going on. Although, I’m not sure if calling this week “regular” is completely accurate. It seems that many things can cause the schedule to change. So it may be that a “regular” week is anything but.

If you can’t tell from my lack of blog in the last 10 days, this week has been quite a lot of work. I am introducing to my partner teachers lots of new activities and interactive games for teaching English. And since I understand the activity (as I’m the one showing them), I need to make the materials. So, I have a lot of materials to make. After my partners learn how the activities work and the materials needed for them, they will be able to make more things. Last weekend was entirely taken up with making materials for this past week. I would not have had time throughout the week to make everything and get sleep.

Sometimes it is difficult to encourage myself to make the material. My partners sometimes change the plan (not all of them write the plan down when we are planning together). Sometimes there was a misunderstanding of how an activity will be done. Sometimes there is a misjudgment of time. And there are many other reasons for a planned activity to not happen. So it can be difficult to be motivated to spend so much time on creating quality materials, especially for activities planned at the end of the lesson, since those tend to be the ones less likely to happen.

However, the reaction of the students when they get to participate in these new kinds of activities more than make up for the time spent prepping for the activities that don’t always happen. I really love seeing the students’ reactions. At the beginning of the lessons, they will see me preparing the materials and ask me (speaking Romanian at a rapid speed, of course) what the stuff is and what we will be doing with it. And then they are very excited to participate in the activities. And I remember why I’m a teacher. It’s a good feeling.