First teaching week

It has been a big journey here already. Sometimes I am not aware of the fact that I am in a foreign land, but mostly the surreal feeling is a hard one to shake. This is why, for example, going into a store and walking out without having anyone explain themselves in disgust can be so satisfying.
 
Teaching in a new school with new classes in a school culture whose most fundamental rules and habits I don't anticipate, feel or inhabit, surrounded by a language I don't know and tune out, instructing in a subject for which I've had no training or experience, collaborating with colleagues who carry twice the load and shouldering therefore a guilty and insistent desire to make good, together with reluctance to overwhelm myself further, have made for an exhausting beginning, and one difficult to track in writing here.

I am teaching 14 lessons (16 the first week with subbing responsibilities) for 45 minutes each, which is about 8-12 lessons fewer than other teachers. Eleven of these lessons are with eleventh and twelfth grade groups I see once a week; three are with ninth graders in the Marketing program. The groups are small, between 8 and 12 students; and until one of the teachers returns from England with another set of students, I have about 135 students.

My role, as defined by the principal and vice principal, is to expose students to plenty of English conversation, as well as to American history and culture, while students' primary English teachers hammer out the textbook.

I was told that students would be reticent and quiet. On hétfő, my very first two classes were very much this way, especially the ninth grade students whom I would end up seeing every day, and I think my own fears and shyness just wired up the wigglies: I was dry, dry, dry. But I took to heart advice I'd received from several places, to be myself; and after learning to slow down a great deal, and gesticulate like a French mime, I ended up fully engaging the last two groups and having a good time myself. I also broke another recommended rule and spoke some Hungarian in the class, very bad Hungarian, hammed it up, in fact, which seemed to put students at their ease.

I believed the next day, kedd, went very well, including the ninth grade class that was a dud the day before; but it turns out I was in the midst of learning something very important. After hearing that the students were quiet and that hopefully the American would break the ice, I took out all the goofy in my bag and smashed the hell out of the ice. But while I was engaging and students were comprehending more and more willingly practicing English out loud in front of others, I wasn't necessarily teaching a language. Here's how I learned it:

The third day, szerda, I saw the ninth graders again, and by this point they were almost wild. They were like ninth graders I've ever met everywhere. One was outwardly defiant. Some had come late. And in the middle of this, I realized that my usual responses to bad behavior were worthless in a foreign land. I knew something about a student notebook that teachers were supposed to request and sign; but the ninth graders spoke almost no English at all, and I didn't know off the top of my head the Hungarian word for the book, let alone the Hungarian phrases I was supposed to use to communicate with parents there. I also knew I could write something in the form notebook, called the napló, kept in the faculty room downstairs, but I was already overwhelmed and making mistakes in permanent marker there. So big gestures and big humor might put students at ease, but I must call on far more to fulfill my role here.

On the fourth day, csütörtök, my approach was more balanced with the ninth graders. I felt better about this. But after four days I don't see much progress from the ninth grade students themselves. I've told the other teacher, Krisztina, that I want to use the textbook with these guys in close concert with what she's doing: their English and my knowledge about teaching language are both at such early stages that I think we both could really use the text to bridge the gap. This means that I will be hounding the other teachers of ninth grade Marketing group with very specific collaboration needs. But hopefully we will start seeing something out of these kids.

Some more general observations about my first teaching week are much more precious than these specifics, because as soon as I get used to the things that amazed me the first day, they're gone; yet these may be the most fascinating and important differences of all.

Students stand when I come into the room. Not only this, but students do not ignore teachers when walking through the halls, nor do teachers ignore students: whether we know each other or not, students halt their conversations, make eye contact, and say, "Jó napot kívánok," and I say the same thing. It's a breathless walk through the halls: I wish you a good day, I wish you a good day, I wish you a good day. Even when it's first thing in the morning and should be saying, "Jó reggelt" instead, I rarely hear good morning at school, because once at school, everyone's in the thick of a day. So if I'm going to walk the halls, I better get my jó napot on.

And students do rise when the teacher walks in the classroom. Between classes, teachers all go to the teacher's room, where all our desks are lined in rows, and we talk and scramble, drink water and run to the bathroom or for a smoke. Breaks are ten or fifteen minutes. When the late bell rings, we're in the faculty room together, and then we make our way up to whatever we have scheduled for that lesson that day. This means, all the students are in the room, and the transition to begin is the teacher's entry: students all rise; the teacher says, Good morning, or good afternoon, please be seated; and then the class can begin.

Faculty Room

The napló system, where we must record our daily lessons in a book and track the sequence of the lesson and various attendance and behavior issues even when we're collaborating within that sequence with a couple other teachers who may or may not be up to date and the napló may or may not be in its cubby and every student group has a different napló and some lessons are with combined groups and so need to be recorded in separate naplós for single lessons and we must write in ink even when I'm always writing the wrong thing in the wrong spot because maybe it's angol, but also maybe it's Nyelv2 instead, and am I in the right napló because I thought I had 12 Gymnasium but I had 12 Water-Management instead, is a little baffling.

I have a lot to learn.