First Week of School

Sorry I've been out of touch lately. Teaching started on September 13 for orientation, and I've been running around like crazy ever since. Not to mention a lot of terrible trips to Aksaray to do paperwork for my resident's permit (meaning three and a half of waiting so I can sign a piece of paper twice). I've been flat-out exhausted.

Disclaimer: my 8th grade speaking club knows some of my online information now, so I have to be either especially careful of what I say or say it with really big words.

Classes have been both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. There's a lot of opportunity for fun activities in my giant classroom, since we're still not working out of the textbook quite yet. When the students are attentive and, key aspect, have a basic understanding of English already, things go well. But it's going to be an ongoing learning experience for me to deal with the students who have very little or no understanding of English, seeing as they're the students most likely to be lost by a lesson and then cause disruptions. And then what? I can't encourage them because they don't understand, and I can't warn them because they don't understand that either. The students who are naturally disruptive are actually some of my favorites: they tend to bring the best energy to the classroom. But disruptive students who can't understand a word I say?

I'm lucky to be working in an institution that understands my situation very well and is very willing to help. While I learned in TESOL never to take a student to the administration because that shows weakness in the teacher's ability to control the class and troubles the administration with troubles they don't need, here they understand how the language barrier can be a difficulty for a young English teacher like myself. The English department has made it clear to me that students must know that the school is unified in its expectations of the students. Now, that makes complete sense to me. What's wrong with those schools I learned about in TESOL?

I've got ambitious plans for my classes this year, and while I know they might be a little too ambitious (writing a play for 5th graders and building a model city for the 6th), my 8th graders have taken a quick passion for the radio show we're going to produce throughout the year. We'll design a website and post the episodes there, and when we do I'll be sure to provide the link for you all. And, thankfully, the club has only 7 students, all wanting to be there, a big improvement upon the 20-some yelling 5th graders (my ears are still ringing).

In addition to the teaching excitement, last Saturday was my Turkish brother Can's birthday, and I spent a big portion of the weekend (including Yom Kippur) with him in the city. I don't have many pictures - all we did was go out to dinner, with homemade birthday cake! - but I've included a couple good ones. It seems most of my friends live on the Asian side of Istanbul, which takes well over two hours for me to get to but is well worth it, as long as I have a place to spend the night. Even though I've crossed the Bosporus Bridge quite a few times now, that picture is the best I've been able to manage of the "Welcome to Asia" sign.

Soon all of this will become a routine, will it? I'm sure some will, some won't.