Teaching Thanksgiving

I must admit, I have not been keeping up with this blog as much as I would like (and yet much more than I realistically thought I would) I have just been so busy break dancing and what-not. 

I am only realizing now that after almost 3 months of teaching high school classes alone (for the first time in my life) I haven't shared anything about my experiences teaching English and American culture to Slovak students... Well, that's all going to change with this post!

Between my busy dancing schedule I attended a training session for Fulbright ETA's in Krakow, Poland. The trip to Krakow was incredible - It was a beautiful city with an old-fashioned and lovely town square (and you already know how important town squares are)!

Me enjoying the town square in Krakow

There was a GIANT head in the square (extra points for Krakow)!

At the training with my training Buddies - Anna from Kosice and James from Budapest, Hungary

The 2 1/2 day training was quite enlightening for me. Initially my fears was that I wouldn't learn anything new, or worse, I would find out that all my teaching methods were awful and the opposite of what a good ESL teacher would do! But neither of my fears materialized. I managed to learn some new techniques for classroom management, new activities to do with my rambunctious first years and where to go to find even more resources. I also learned that my intuitions about how to teach students wasn't so far off from what the experts said to do (whew!) About myself, I learned that even if I don't know what all the various teaching techniques are called, or even if I only took one course about education at Lewis and Clark, I can still be a good teacher. 

Perhaps, you shouldn't listen to me. Judge for yourselves! Last Wednesday I filmed one of my lessons. We were talking about Thanksgiving (perfect timing!) in my first year classes. 

(BTW, I teach: 2 first year English classes, 2 fifth year English conversation classes, and 2 fifth year writing classes)

So, here is a 13 minute video to illustrate how my 45 minute long lessons with fifteen students (age 14-16) tend to go.  I apologize for the choppy editing. I wanted to get this video up as soon as possible. I'm also sorry if there are really boring parts, but just think how my poor students feel :). 

video from my class

We spent three days talking about Thanksgiving, because I really like Thanksgiving! The next day we had a "feast" in class. Every student brought in a snack to share and I brought some pumpkin-spice cookies (the closest one can get to pumpkin pie in this country). My students really enjoyed the feast and Thanksgiving traditions in general (success!) For me, having the "feast" with my students and going around our desks, arranged in a circle, saying what they were thankful for made me feel like I was at home a little bit. 

It was the perfect way to celebrate Thanksgiving! 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!

So, from my students and me...

Dovidenia!

A photo from our Thanksgiving Feast!

A little cultural appreciation...

Here at EGT (Evangelical School in Tisovec) there is a wonderful tradition of initiating the first years.... 

and this includes first year teachers, like myself!

Another American Tia and I were asked to prepare some special for students during their immatriculation   event earlier this evening. Naturally I jumped at the chance to make fun of myself!

So, Tia ("DJ Zmrzlina") and I ("Zamok", which means lock in Slovak) prepared a dance number to a song from one of the oldest hip-hop groups in Slovakia - Rap Steady Crew. 

Check out the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ofeeoUKCM

Enjoy!

Think Global, Act Slovak

This weekend a couple students from our school participated in a Model United Nations conference in Bratislava. I was asked to come along as their faculty advisor (not so much because I know about Model United Nations or even my way around Bratislava, but more as an English helper). I, of course, jumped at the chance to travel again because, as Mae noticed, I go on quite the number of adventures here...

So I went to Bratislava!

The conference took place in the building of National Council of Slovak Republic – simply said, the Slovak parliament.

This conference was quite an international event with students from many countries present. All of the students formed delegations representative of countries in the United Nations and discussed problems such as Piracy in Somalia, Extremism, North Korea, the Advancement of Women and many more topical issues.

My girls were Turkey and they rocked it!

My girls, and the other faculty advisor at the opening ceremony

Well, perhaps I'm easily impressed, but it was wonderful to see so many young adults discussing such important topics in the world and coming to resolution about these problems. Sometimes, I am guilty (as many Americans are accused of being) of only knowing about issues that face America. These 14-18 year old students knew more about the problems of the world than I did. I truly felt, as I looked around the room, that these students could do something to help. That's one of the things I love most about teaching - seeing the passion and energy in younger students.

Then I remembered, I'm young too! And here I am, in another country, with the ability to make a difference. So, I feel not only impressed but inspired to do something great with my year in Slovakia. I'm not exactly sure what that will look like now, but for starters I'm going to try harder to actively learn Slovak language (which, I've recently learned is on a couple lists of the most difficult language to learn) and understand more about the culture through my independent research project (which I haven't even decided on yet)

I have some work to do, but I'm really excited!
Stay tuned...

I suppose this is dovidenia for a little while then...

The girls and I in front of the Bratislava Castle (I love how I'm the shortest!)