First Week of School

Week one of teaching is complete. Whew. This week has flown by. It was a flurry of meetings, finding classrooms, trying to pronounce Polish names, and going over my classroom expectations, time and time again. Everything has gone fairly well. A few glitches, but they are good stories now more than anything else.
I think now is an appropriate time to go more into the Polish school system and how it works. Of course, I do not have all of the answers about this, but this is the general idea. Students attend primary school for some years, maybe six or seven. The next step is the gimnasium which lasts for three years, and is numbered 1, 2, 3. At our school the numbers are followed by “g” to mark that they are a part of the lower school, since the same building holds the litciuem. The high school years are also numbered 1, 2, 3. Students finish their formal school by age 18 or 19 and either start work or attend some for of college. College can be vocational or degree focused.
There are one to three “classes” in each grade, and each class has about 25-30 members. Students are set in their classes from their first year at the litciuem and stay in these classes until they graduate. They function sort of like homerooms, in that they have a teacher that stays with them the whole time. However, they go to EVERY class together. So, tough luck if you don’t like someone or date someone and break up because you will never get away from them until you graduate. Sorry. Also, each class has a class book in which attendance for EVERY class period is taken and in which EVERY grade is written. It is super intense. Teachers are to pick up the class book from the teacher’s longue during the switch between classes and fill it out. We are also responsible for writing what is covered in class. I am terrified of these class books. Since my lessons only contain half of the students from the class, I just let the other teach have the book. Therefore I have only written in one class book so far. Whoops. Hopefully no one will hunt me down.
The master schedule for the entire school is posted in the teacher’s longue. It is huge. There are two copies of it, one that is listed by teacher and one that is listed by class. Teachers and students move rooms constantly during the day. They also handle substituting internally, in that teachers who have free blocks just go in and teach for the absent teacher. I dread the day I have to substitute. Some of the rooms are locked in between usages, so sometimes you have to go and get a key to unlock the door. There are several keys for each room, in theory, but it seems as if some of them are missing. Some keys are old and some are new. Getting the key, the class book, and physically getting TO the classroom in five minutes is a daunting task. However, classes do not really start on time anyhow, so maybe I just need to loosen up; I am not quite sure. Oh, there also are not computers in any of the classrooms sans the computer labs—not even teacher computers.
Again, I teach mostly the high school level students. There is a remarkable difference between the levels, but all in all they seem to know the same vocabulary topics and have good basic communication skills. I think most of my students understand the words that come out of my mouth. Although, I did have one girl today that was totally deer in the headlights. So here are a few good student anecdotes to wrap up this entry with.
In the very first class I had a student with 15 letters in his first name. 15! Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to be a little dramatic and exaggerate numbers. I promise you, I am not exaggerating. 15 letters. Needless to say I could not say his name, and he said I could call him some shortened version of it. Don’t worry, I can’t pronounce that name either. Later in the class we were doing an activity called “Questions from a box.” The students draw questions I wrote and take turns answering them. When asked “What is you favorite flower or plant?” this student responded, “Marijuana.” Whoops. Maybe I walked into that one by having high school boys talk about their favorite plants. I removed that question from the box for later uses. Then a few minutes later, some emergency bells started going off in some other building. This student said, “The Germans are coming!” I did not appreciate how funny yet awful this comment was. The day before he said this was the 70th anniversary of the Germans invading Poland and starting WWII.
In another class we were having a chain conversation, where the conversation that is “happening” between two people is passed down the line of students sort of like the wave. The students take turns being person one and person two in the conversation. This particular group was doing well with it; they were having a fun conversation about how this person’s favorite type of movie was James Bond action flicks. Now, there was a line of about 5 girls and then 6 boys. The last girl in this line asked the first boy in this line why he liked James Bond movies so much. He responded, “Because he is so handsome.” To which the next boy said, “Why do you think he is so good looking?” And the next, “Because he has great hair.” And then, “Do you have any pictures of him?” Followed by, “Of course.” And finally, “Can I borrow some?” We all had a nice laugh.
This next week will bring more first days with five more new classes and then diving into round two with my other classes. Should be good!
Blessings,
Colleen
PS-Please forgive any spelling errors. I am posting this from the teacher's computer and it doesn't do English spell check!