I completed my first week of teaching. My students did eventually find their way to my classroom. And they are lovely people. Emily compared her feelings about the first week of teaching to how she feels about working out. Nervous before starting but completely satisfied afterward. That’s more or less how I’ve felt about teaching this week too.
The rumors were true that my students know hardly any English. But that does not diminish how hard they try and how eager they are to understand. I do a lot of charades, a lot of exaggerated emotions, and a lot of writing on the board while speaking. If I can cut some of those things out by the end of the year and just speak to them, I will be pleased.
It’s interesting experiment. Put someone who has been told not to speak Turkish (and basically can’t) in front of a group of students and try to get them to do workbook pages and play scattergories. Right now, it seems like a system that may work. Although many of them have been studying English in high school and before, I am, for many of them, their first contact with a native speaker. Think back to how much Spanish you knew after high school. And although I think they probably understand about 45% percent of what I say, some of them have already begun to imitate certain expression. I heard some “see you laters” when my students left class yesterday instead of “see you” which is a direct translation from the Turkish and what is often heard around Erzurum. I’ve been saying “good job!” at the end of nearly every sentence and yesterday one of my students said “Good job, teacher!” when I finally managed to pronounce his name correctly.
Most of the English I’ve heard from them has been in incomplete sentences or sentences completed in Turkish. For example, “Teacher, at home book kaldim” for “I left my book at home.” That still got a “good job!” though, as did any attempt at communication has received this week. With these attempts, they are unintentionally helping me learn Turkish--and making me smile. All four of my classes are very sweet (with the possible exception of one that because of a few ringleaders, all coincidentally with the same name, Muhammad. These Muhammads insist on maintaining a soft roar of Turkish whispering throughout the entire class; I’m sure I’ll learn to like them eventually) and I’m excited to get to know them this year. My former RA life has taught me that memorizing names is of preeminent importance to get a group to take you seriously. And although I’ve done pretty well with the memorizing so far, my pronunciation is pretty awful. Luckily, my students think it’s hilarious. I think it’s a way for them to have some greater authority on a topic--and I’m happy to give them that chance. They literally crack up at my struggles with Ö’s and Ü’s. “No, teacher, oooooo, no oooooo.” The same number of o’s indicate my lack of understanding that there is a difference between the two. We struggled for about 10 minutes for me to understand why it was hilarious that I called Mahmet, Mamet. It turns out when you don’t emphasize the “ha” in the middle, you call someone a “wooly mammoth”. That took a lot a charades and references to the movie Ice Age to get that across.
How writing that paragraph made me feel confirms to me how much I am going to enjoy spending 4 hours a week with each group this year. “Teacher, it is much distant!” said Özkan to me when I told him that I would see him again on Tuesday. Yes, I agree, Özkan! It has been one week, but I’ve been having visions of grandeur of a career in teaching. Maybe this is the reason I’m here, it’s what I’m supposed to do! Maybe. We will see how week 2 and week 3 and the rest of the year go.
In other news, we made our first attempt at entertaining last night. A joint birthday party for Elizabeth and one of our fellow lecturers, Nermin. And Uncle Dan, I’d call it a success. We served tea, a store-bought ice cream cake and figs and apricots. We didn’t buy alcohol because we were pretty positive that none of our guests drink. The first thing Zuhal said we she walked in was, “You don’t have alcohol? What kind of Americans are you?” We found out she was completely joking though when we told her that we did have some bottle of wine in Korey’s room and could grab them if she wanted. We already discovered that you don’t need alcohol to have a good time in Erzurum but we found out last night that you also don’t need it to have a spontaneous dance party. Dance exchange, I should say. Zu taught us some belly dancing moves, Burcu taught us some gypsy dances that I can’t remember the name of them and several tradition Turkish wedding dances. And we showed them the Cupid shuffle and the Cat Daddy along with the Macarena and YMCA. Nermin loved the Cupid Shuffle so much that she texted me last night to tell me she was still dancing to it when she got home. I feel the same way about the dances they taught us. Although my abs hurt from the belly dancing, I want to keep practicing the Turkish wedding ones. They involve holding pinkies in a circle and running and kicking to the music. I’m looking forward to our next party/practice session.
Overall, a very satisfying week; I barely remember my anxiety at the beginning. I’m grateful to be only teaching 16 hours a week. I think I will fill my free time eventually but right now it’s great to have ample of time to lesson plan and do things that take all day due to my lack of Turkish and understanding of how things operate here. Like printing the syllabi for my classes.
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