Class - Day 19 (Week IV)

The rain has gone away, thankfully or at least it's decided to give us a much needed reprieve.

Today was our last group class session as next week we will all be independently working on our final assignments which are due the end of next week. Some of us will see each other at the school a lot next week while others will be happily working at home like Vince.

To show Julie and Karen our appreciation for making all our classes so much fun we got them wine and chocolates. And, to celebrate our getting this far we all went to the pub where Julie and Karen joined us for lots of great conversation and fun stories. It may have been an incredibly taxing and stressful four weeks so far but these teachers and my fellow students are so amazingly giving, loving and generous with themselves that I am missing them already and it hasn’t been more than a few hours since we parted ways.

It’s funny to think that I’ve spent more time with this group of people (approximately 160) in the last four weeks that I’ve spent with most people in my life. We were all total strangers (with the exception of Aoife and Kim who were in college together) four weeks ago and now it’s hard to imagine that we won’t see one another everyday from now on.

I’m so tremendously grateful for having, by pure chance, been put together with these eleven other students who have inspired me in so many ways and helped me through even the most trying lesson. And that would be the grammar lesson if you hadn't already guessed.

Today was also my final teaching practice and I did a lesson on “Going Places.” I had five students (Silvia and Jessica from Spain, Marc from Gahanna, Jane from the Czech Republic and Mohammad from Afghanistan) who really just embraced my lesson and had fun with all the games I had planned. And they were so kind to one another. Silvia espeically really took Marc, our begginer level student, under her wing and helped him through an exercise. She was so patient with him that I let the exercise run over a bit just so they could finish and to give Marc the chance to really shine. He's so sweet and very soft spoken and right now it's a struggle for him to speak and write the language.

At the start of my lesson I had them do a name game where they threw a ball to another student and said that persons name. The game eventually progressed to naming random countries, cities, town, etc. This lead nicely into my next game which is “Yes, lets!” I would say to the students “Let’s clap our hands” and they would respond enthusiastically with “Yes, Lets!” and then do the action until another person said “Let’s jump up and down” at which time all the class would yell “Yes, lets!” and we’d all start jumping up and down. It was so much fun and I can’t believe I got them all to do it. By the end of the game I had led them to where I said "Let's go on a trip" and they said "Yes, lets!" and that when I gave them their reading assignment which was a detailed itineary of a trip they were all hypotetically going on to London, Paris and Amsterdam. The segway to my topic of "Let's go places" was a success and I couldn't have been happier.

I really loved my students and just like in my other classes we always have at least one student who makes you laugh and in this class it was Mohammad. He just wants to answer all the questions so he leaps right in with an answer before I can even finish my question. But, since he’s really so good natured about some things, when I explained that I promised to call his name when I needed him to give an answer and that he must refrain from saying anything until then he seemed to understand although it clearly was a struggle for him to contain his enthusiastic outbursts.

I must laugh when I think back to Maura’s lesson on Tuesday when she also had Mohammad as a student and he got agitated, in a funny way, with Zacarias who had accidentally kicked him under the table. Maura separated them like they were kids but Mohammad wasn't ready to let go of his annoyance so when Maura gave them a handout with a series of line drawings depicting, a ghost story and asked them to write a story of what is going on in each picture Mohammad proceeded to write something like “I told Zacarias to wear his coat outside because it was cold and he didn’t so now the ghost got him.” I was hysterical reading it and now I just can’t help but appreciate Mohammad for his eccentricities and even his outbursts.

Paulene assessed my teaching practice today and she is just so sweet. She actually assessed my first one as well and like the first practice I received another distinction. I really wasn’t expecting it but it was nice to get anyway.

Tonight at the pub I was so fortunate to be able to spend some quality time talking with Ben who is the youngest in our class but truly a wise soul. He is an environmental activist and human rights advocate and will be leaving for Japan soon where he will spend some time learning Japanese and then will be working with a wonderful organization to help stop the slaughter of whales. He’s such a giving, kind and extremely intelligent man with genuine compassion for others that is apparent every time you look in his eyes. I know he is going to achieve great success in everything he does and since his aspirations are all about saving the environment and bettering the quality of life for all people his success means only good things for the rest of us. Go Ben!!!!

I also had the pleasure of spending time with Louis (one of my teaching practice group teammates) who is delightfully fun, intelligent and kind. I just adore Louis and like Maura and Aoife, the other students making up our teaching practice group) I will miss him immensely once the class is over. Louis and his lovely girlfriend are leaving for Poland in December where they will spend a month or so with her family over the holidays and then they are off to China to live for a year or so. I’m so excited for them and I know they’ll find much happiness there. Now that class is nearing and end we are all thinking of what comes next. Most of us are not sure at all what the next steps are but it seems many are thinking of going to Spain or Southern Italy for a time to practice teaching since both areas of the world are more lenient with beginning teachers. We were told today by Patrick, who runs our school, that the best places to go are Spain and Italy and that you should just go to a city there and start knocking on doors with your resume in hand and you will surely find a job in no time at all. I think for the younger students this is a great idea and I hope they take his advice and do it. For me, I’m just not sure. At 43 years old you don’t usually just got someplace and start knocking on doors, you make plans and you take time to think it all through. Right now I still have a lot of class work left to do and a few months before I get back to NYC so for now I’ll just keep my eyes and ears open and see what opportunities come my way.

It was a nice day from beginning to end and although there is still a lot of work to be done I’m looking forward to doing it.