September 3, 2010: First Day of teaching!!

September 3, 2010: Today was the first day I actually taught the students in a formal lesson.My first class began at 8:40 when I taught the Beginners' English class for 9D. I decided to gauge the students' English abilities by asking each student a series of questions. Whenever a particular sentence gave them trouble, I would have the entire class repeat the sentence and then ask them to alter the sentence by giving them a different word to insert in it (e.g., "I am fourteen years old" and I would say "15" and they'd insert this word into the sentence instead of "14", etc.) I learned that Hungarians have the same difficulty with the "th" sound that my Asian students had.  They seem to be reluctant to expose their tongues to others. After I polled each of the ten students, I asked them to pair up and write three English sentences that they would like to ask me. After they had done that, I asked for two volunteers from class to sit in front of the class. I then asked each of the remaining eight students to ask one of their questions of the two students seated in the front to answer on my behalf. Of course they had to guess answers to questions such as "How old are you?", "What is your favorite sport?", etc. After each student had asked a question of my two surrogates and they had answered the questions, I told the two surrogates to return to their seats and I answered the questions for myself. (It was nice that one thought I was 40 and the other thought I was 50!) They seemed to enjoy the class and very soon the bell rang to change classes. Here is a picture of the class.

Beginning students from class 9D

 The next class was the Intermediate English class of 9D. These students were much more knowledgeable about English and could form more complex English sentences.  For these students I gave them a four by four matrix where each cell of the matrix had a question for them to answer (e.g., Find someone in class who was born in the same month as you; Find someone who likes the same movie as you, etc.) After I had given them some time to read over the matrix, I asked them to convert each entry into a question they'd ask of each other (e.g., "In what month were you born?"; "What movies do you like?", etc.) We went over the questions they would ask each other.  Then, I had them get up and mingle to fill in the matrix with people who could answer the questions for them and what proof they have of the answer (e.g., the name of the movie they liked). After they had time to do this, I had them sit in their seats and I found out who had filled in the most entries of the matrix. Then we went over each entry and I asked elaborating questions (Amazing how these students seem to love horror films like "Saw", "Nightmare on Elm Street", etc.) Although this exercise went well, it was almost too easy for them, but it did get them to relate with each other and me. Here's a picture of the students I did this exercise with. (Unfortunately I forgot to take the picture of one of the classes, so I'll provide that the next time I meet them -- I want you to see all the classes I'm teaching!)

Intermediate English Class 9D

Pre-Intermediate English class 9B

There was one class that I'm teaching that is not in the bilingual program. Therefore, I used the former exercise on this class which is a bit larger and doesn't have quite as many English classes as the bilingual classes.  This class also proved to be a bit more talkative than the others meaning that they spoke Hungarian too much. I'm going to have to work on maintaining a bit more order in this class.

Class 2 of the Non Bilingual Class

I was exhausted by the end of the day. And next week promises to be even busier since I received a new schedule and it looks like I'll be teaching six classes in a row on Tuesday and Friday! 


Some other interesting things of note at school:

• During the first two of my classes, I was interrupted by someone who had to inform the students of the new schedule for next week. They proceeded to tell the students what it is orally while the students wrote it down. I guess this shows just how valuable paper is since in the US, we would have printed the schedule and distributed it to all the students rather than spend the time in having them write it down.
• I note that the lights in the classrooms are usually not lit opting for sunshine through the windows for lighting.  I followed this practice in all but one class where there was only one window.
• While walking down the hallway, I smelled not only cigarette smoke but also pot! I don't know if pot is a problem in Hungary, but I will ask next week.
• Between classes, Seyfried Kati, a fellow English teacher of 9E rushed to me with a concern about me. I was introduced in the English department's meeting as "Dick Halverstadt" and she said that in Hungary, the students are well aware of an alternate meaning for my first name and said that she was concerned that students would find out and hence make fun of me. (So far the students have been VERY respectful but you never can tell when the tides will change). She suggested that I use another nickname such as "Bob". When I told her that Bob was short for Robert, she said, "Really?!" I suggested that I resort to using my full official name "Richard", and we left it at that.
• I won't bore you with my lunch menu every day, but thought I'd tell you that today I had a delicious cauliflower and carrot soup and spaghetti. The Hungarians appear to have soup with every meal.

Apartment Update: As I was taking my daily walk along the Danube, I read a text message from Fekete Kati telling me that the apartment owner decided not to rent the apartment to me and so it will take another week or two to find an apartment. Frankly, I had had bad vibes from him when we met with him yesterday, so I sensed that this was not to be. At any rate, we're back to square one. Further, last night the cousin of the apartment told me that she will be doing inventory in her shop and would like to stay in the apartment rather than having to take the long commute back to home, so I really need to find somewhere to go. I think I'll contact Hajni, the Hungarian CETP director and see what she can tell me. Stay tuned.