The Younger Side of Teaching

Merhaba (hello) We’ve now been teachers for two weeks and I am struggling to learn my students names.  I started to count the # of students today and realized that I have over 100 students each week.  Of course most of the names are new to me and C’s are really pronounced like J’s.  It helped when I figured that out.  I did have them do name tags for the 3rd, 4th and 5th years which helped some also.  Like Jerry I have kids at all levels of English.  There are a few kids who grew up with English so English lessons can be pretty boring for them.  Since I only have 9 assigned classes a week I have been going to the classes with the English teachers who speak Turkish and going around helping the students during the lessons.   When you have 23 first graders one teacher just isn’t enough.  The one on one gives me a good idea of the level of each student. The Turkish teachers do their best to speak English throughout the class but sometimes use Turkish when the kids need to quiet down.  The kids still aren’t use to the fact that I speak no Turkish.  Some of them try the “I have to go to the bathroom” routine on me.  I can just indicate I don’t understand. Then the demo’s get pretty funny.  Usually I say no but occasionally the “demo” seems pretty real so I say yes.  I think for the most part I am being “conned” by experts. But, I will get to know the game better each time and then I will get my con going and they will learn in spite of themselves. You know me, teacher Carol, I get my man just like the Canadian Mounties even if he is six.

I want to thank our new friends Roger and Sibel for inviting us to the beginning of semester buffet for the communications professors at Anadolu University.  They just moved into a beautiful new building and there are 80 professors involved in the program which serves “erasmus”  or foreign students who come from all over the world.

If any of you blog readers have a chance the link to the article about Eskisehir in an earlier post is a really good description of what one person can accomplish. Worth your time to read, tamam (ok).  (that’s a word you hear a lot in turkey just like in the states.)