I always thought classroom observations were stressful in America. Every tiny mistake I made, I had to think, "Is someone going to assume I normally do this this badly, or worse?" The bright side here is that there's no need to scrutinized, nit-pick for tiny mistakes, or search my actions and lessons for flaws. The not-so-bright side is that the reason finding the problems with my lessons is a non-issue is that the problems are so tremendous that they virtually overshadow everything else that takes place in our classrooms.
A few direct quotes:
"I've taught primary and secondary pupils, university students, worked for the Ministry of Education, and worked in Peace Corps's E.E. program for all these years, and that is the worst class I have ever seen."
"Your lesson plans are great, but if you can't at least get the students to look at you, you're not teaching them."
"Maybe some different classroom management would help-- maybe if you'd stopped the boy who talked permanently through your entire lesson."
"No one in that room learned anything. You sad they have a test next week. I know they will all fail."
"I don't know what to tell you to do, that was just awful."
There was positive feedback, too, of course-- unfortunately, none of it was anything actually remarkable. The lessons were dreadful, and she was just trying to offer us at least a little something positive. My best lesson that was observed today isn't something I'd ever have even considered satisfactory in America. My worst was the worst she'd ever seen, too, and incidentally, that group was notably better-behaved than usual today.
Guess that's life.
At least I finally know I'm not crazy for being frustrated beyond all reason with my teaching experience here. I still have no idea how to improve anything, what to change, whether I'll ever do anything more than try to teach in Moldova, or if it's even worth my while to be here. The suggestion that was posed, yet again, was to perhaps change my site, and try to put me some place easier to work.
Accepting that offer would be double-edged, of course. It would make my teaching easier, but I certainly didn't come all this way to teach in a school that's already doing well. It would remove me from the school where I do have some small successes, and where I'd hate to abandon what tiny bit of progress I've spent months working on, but it could potentially put me in a place where I could make much more progress. It would also remove me from a rather comfortable living arrangement with a host family that I've grown rather fond of in a home where I'm just finally starting to feel pretty much at home. I know that I didn't come all this way for an easy and comfortable life-style, either, but I can't help but think that downgrading to a lack of indoor plumbing or readjusting to a new home or a new host family, may be enough stress to snap my already weakened resolve to stay here and do good things. Or, at the least, I fear it would be stress enough to make even the best of new working placements just as difficult as the challenging one I'm already in.
I'm totally torn between staying put and potentially not accomplishing anything noteworthy in my two years, or moving to a new site, starting yet again, and losing the few months of work I have put in here. Ultimately, I told her that I want to continue working at this school, at least a while longer, before even considering anything else, because while it's beyond any difficulty I ever imagined I'd face in any classroom (since these are nothing like any classroom I've ever known before).
The good news is that my program manager did bring the mail I'd received in Chisinau to me since she was making the trip. I received my Christmas gift from my dad, a (ginormous) book, Van Gogh: The Life, which I fully intend to spend tons of these dark wintery evenings buried in. I also got a box from his side of the family full of real coffee (in little filter packets, because coffee makers are super-rare around here), candies, travel sized toiletries that I'll be glad I have when traveling over the holidays (to Turkey, particularly to Istanbul, which was Constantinople-- Oops. I digress.), and warm snugly socks and a scarf-- definitely good to have, as we got our first legitimate snow of the year this morning. (Thanks, guys, for the care package!)
After dragging myself through a moderately miserable school-day, a miserable meeting with my partners and program manager, I snuggled into my new wooly socks, slathered a banana with the peanut butter Abby sent me in her last package, and sipped down a giant mug of Folgers. So, the day wasn't a total bust. There's definite value here in savoring the little things. Comfort foods and toasty feet may not get me through two years of service, but they'll get me through days like today.
I also read this this afternoon-- the kids' behavior may be the biggest obstacle I seem to face in my classrooms here, but at least on the "teaching English" front, I know it's not just me. I'd never thought so much about how irrational our mostly-borrowed, cobbled-together language really is until trying to get students used to a phonetically spelled language to transcribe the words I say or say the words I've written. "House" becomes "huh-oh-oo-seh" and "answer" becomes "ah-nn-swuh-air"... not just when they say them, either, I've got to get them to spell these things somehow.
I enjoyed reading the poem below today... It's difficult, and it's long, but I can't help enjoying a little poking fun at our language when teaching it's become so difficult. Yes, I'm lashing out at the English language through the borrowed words of some other author-- so??
You may want to have this open and your volume up as you read, for the pronunciation guides.
English Pronunciation
September 5, 2007
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
English Pronunciation, by G. Nolst Trenité
And as a special treat for any of you who've read my whole novel of an account of my day, pictures:
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| My host brother, Costel, made use of an unused cardboard box that had been sitting in my room, as a house/airplane for Tim, our cat. |
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| Tim may not have had quite as much fun with this game as Costel did. |
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| While I sipped my coffee this afternoon, I heard what I thought was a torrential downpour start completely out of the blue. Turned out to be about five minutes of seriously intense, pea-sized hail. |
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| I was going to pick some up and get a picture of the hailstones in my hand... |
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| ... but by the time I bent down it had melted and begun to come down as rain. |
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| It was large enough that even a few minutes into the rain, it was frozen white on the ground, though. |
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| Of course, when I stepped onto the balcony (AKA roof of the garage) to get a picture, the cat had to join me. I go nowhere in this house sans-kitty. |
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| Found the largest mug in the cupboard to brew my single-serving coffee in. It was perfect! |
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| Oh, and for all of you who looked at that photo and thought, "Surely that purple creature in front of the human house with the puppy prints is an-- elephant!" Ding, ding, ding!!! You got it! You'd win the prize, if there was one. (Bonus points if you assumed he'd be wearing an orange bib.) |
What?! All that, and there's no prize??
I'd offer to do better next time, but I made my first trip to the Edineț Post Office this week, and it's not something I plan to attempt in the near future again. Prizes are not in the near future of my blog.
You'll just have to settle for the satisfaction of knowing I found a new favorite coffee mug, and the sheer pleasure of admiring my host-brother and host-cat.
Thanks for reading. :-) Sorry for whining. I won't write again until I've got positive things to say-- promise!
Pray that they're positive things about how much my students improve now that my partner and I are armed with the knowledge that their behavior is indeed unacceptable, and that a drastic change is in order. Maybe it'll help!
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