First week of teaching

I received my schedule on Monday. I’ll be teaching 25 contact hours per week or 5 classes of Listening and Speaking. Yay, my favorite class! I’ll teach 4 hours on Monday, 5 hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 3 hours on Thursdays and 8 hours on Fridays. That Friday schedule is going to kick my ass, but I’ll survive. After all, “this too shall pass” and hopefully next semester won’t be as crazy.

We get paid an extra $15 an hour (30 Turkish lira) for all hours we teach over 20 hours. I did the calculations and for my schedule that works out to an extra $300 a month, or $600 Turkish Lira. There are some decent apartments in the city for 800 or 900 Turkish Lira, so with the extra money I’m making, I can pay rent on an apartment and still have enough to tuck away into savings. Yes, that’s right, I’ve already decided that I’d like to move into my own apartment.

While my schedule may not be ideal, I worked just as much when I was teaching high school Spanish full-time for two years. At least now I have more teaching experience under my belt and I feel as though I have a better handle on classroom management. Plus…y’know, I get to live in another country.

Also, at this university, we have a curriculum unit who plans what we will teach each week, right down to the pages in the book and the homework that must be assigned. Therefore, I don’t really have to do a whole lot of lesson planning. However, if we finish a lesson early and they’ve also done all the extra assignments, I’ll be sure to have something up my sleeve where they can practice speaking English.

Because of the way the schedule goes, at the writing of this blog entry, I’ve only taught my students in three of my five classes. I have one class of students who are, at this time, reluctant to speak…in any language. That’s fine with me, because my other two classes are real live wires. They all seem to be good kids, but like most students their age, they LOVE their cell phones. Oy with the poodles, already.

My students chatter and joke with each other in Turkish during their EFL class. So what do I do? I start instructing in Spanish, of course! Then when their eyes glaze over, I say in English, "It's hard when someone's speaking a language you don't understand, isn't it? I’m in a new environment now, teaching English as a foreign language to students who share the same native language and many of the same cultural values. I must continue to educate myself about the best ways to teach my students so that they can get the most out of their education. Well, those who actually CARE to get something out of their education, that is.

Until next time, dear readers. If you have any questions, please email me and I will probably make the answers my next blog entry.