Teaching in Wolbrom

On Monday, October 15th, I began my first week of teaching.  I knew going into this position that I would be living in Krakow, but would have to commute on a daily basis.  While this has already proven extremely inconvenient and annoying, I’m certain that my daily commute will serve as a good test of patience.  In fact, commuting has never been a factor in my working life.  I’ve been fortunate enough to live incredibly close (i.e. 10 minutes away or less) to my place of work.  Now, I commute one hour both ways by minibus to a small town called Wolbrom, where the school is located.  I also have to take a sketchy path through some wilderness on my way to and from the bus stop, which I really dislike because I’m always afraid some man is hiding in the bushes or something!  I don’t get back to Krakow until 9:30pm on some nights.

A little graffiti action I captured on my walk home from the bus stop after work. Cravovia is a popular soccer team in Cracow.

Here’s what my typical weekday looks like:

6:00am:  Wake up (Barbara has a 1 year old and 2 1/2 year old who wake up and start playing downstairs, so this is like my alarm 😉

7:00am:  Actually get out of bed

8:00am:  Eat breakfast, take a shower, check my emails, social networks, etc.

8:30-9am:  Look at my cryptic work schedule (which is ever-changing) and see what classes I teach that day.  I search for extra material that I can include to make the lessons more interesting.

9:00-11:00am:  Prepare notes for my 4 or 5 classes (depending on the day), do whatever stuff around the apartment, go grocery shopping, etc.

11:30am (sometimes 12:30):  Be at the bus stop.

1:00-2:00pm:  Arrive at Q-edu in Wolbrom.

2:30-7:30pm (or 8:00):  Classes (often with very little break, I barely have enough time to go to the bathroom)

7:35-8:15:  Haul my ass over to the busstop so as not to miss the last bus, which is at 8:30pm.

8:30-9:30pm:  Arrive home, eat dinner, go on computer.

10:00-11:30pm:  Sleep.

My notes for the class I had on Friday, October 19th. Notice all the crazy Polish names 🙂

 

As you can see, my commute is the real bummer in my schedule, but otherwise it’s doable.  Every second week I teach only three days a week, so that’s a nice reprieve.  I taught five classes on my first day at Q-edu, and thankfully, all of them went relatively smoothly and the students seemed to enjoy themselves.  I’m only one of two native speaking teachers, so my workload is fairly high compared to the other teachers.   A great deal of students were thrilled when they were told I would be teaching at their school, hence why I teach so many classes per day.  Native English speaking teachers are high in demand!   My students are anywhere from 8 years old to adults in their mid-40’s, and all are at various levels of proficiency. The class sizes are small, and range from 2 to 7 students.

The most challenging aspect of teaching English is communication.  Particularly with younger students, they don’t seem to quite grasp the fact that I don’t speak Polish and can’t understand them when they start to eagerly tell me about their day.  I wish I could speak the language and understand what the little guys are saying, but it’s just not going to happen (at least for a while) haha.  The common denominator in all of my classes is that the students are very shy with me when it comes to answering questions.  If I directly call on a student for example, he or she is often incredibly flustered or completely blanks.   This is especially common with the young boys, who are probably intimidated by the far that A) I’m a native speaker  and B) I’m a young woman.  Regardless, I have found ways to follow the course material but incorporate my own “fun” word games and class activities to keep the students motivated.  Fortunately, I have received extremely positive feedback from parents via my boss, and many students have told their parents that they really enjoyed my class.  This is the highest compliment that can be paid to a teacher!   After an exhausting but rewarding first week of teaching, I have high hopes for my teaching endeavors here in Poland! 🙂