Over the past couple days, I feel like I have gotten a real taste of Moldovan schools. The schedules aren’t set yet; there are still daily changes. Originally, I was scheduled to teach two 5th grades, two 6th grades, one 7th grade, two 8th grades, and two 9th grade classes. And this was split up so that I teach two classes with three of my partners and 3 classes with one of my partners.
Well, this plan has changed. I kind of guessed it would seeing as it would be difficult to schedule all of the classes without any coinciding since I’m teaching with different teachers, which turned out to happen. Which classes I will be team-teaching have changed four times over the last three days. But I’m hopeful the changes have stopped, because none of those changes were today. After several changes, my classes (right now) are mostly the same; I’m not teaching 9th grade classes anymore, but instead teaching one regular 10th grade class and a 10th grade class for students who are just beginning English. I’m kind of excited about both.
Also, there is miscommunication between the teachers and students. Monday afternoon I was meeting with Svetlana during our free period. Then about half way through the period, an 8th grade class came into the classroom. Apparently, they were told to go to one class, but they were scheduled to be with Svetlana. They didn’t have their textbooks or anything since they thought they didn’t have English lessons that day. This was not one of the classes I'm schedule to teach with, so I was going to leave to continue planning, but Svetlana started a question-and-answer forum about America. Once again, a performance was requested. But this time, they asked me to perform a traditional American dance. Needless to say, I didn’t. Mostly cause I don’t know one. But also because the only dance I could think of was the Macarena.
And then today, one of the teachers was absent. And when a teacher is absent, they can’t always find sub, so the students are added to other classes. So today, the 7th grade class was twice as big because there was another group of students who we don’t usually teach. It kind of made the class feel more like babysitting than teaching. We tried to continue as if the additional students had been part of the class the whole time. But they haven’t, so they just kind of sat there, bored and not really included.
In addition to constant schedule changing, my partners and I haven’t really gotten into the flow of working together yet. Yesterday, in one of the classes I was observing, my partner teacher wasn’t present when the bell rang. After about 3-4 minutes, the students were getting restless, and I thought I would just start a lesson, even though I had no plans nor did I know where the students were in their lessons. So I just started going over the homework. My partner showed up 10 minutes after the bell had rung, and I had just finished checking the homework with the students. Then she sat down, started working though some paperwork, and left me to teach the class…that I had no plans for…and the students spoke very little English. If she wants to observe me teaching, I would like to know in advance. But she wasn’t even observing; she was getting some work done for administration or something. Not exactly what I’m here for. I really wasn’t happy with this, but as long as it was just this one time, I’m not going to make a big deal out of it. If it happens again, I’ll speak with her.
It can be kind of frustrating sometimes, but most of the frustrating things are things that will pass quickly. Or they are things I might be able to help change for the better. I’ll get the hang of things, and the frustrations will lessen. Regardless, handling this instability is really helping me develop my ability to be flexible and think on the spot. Yea for another growth opportunity.
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