We Know Things!

Written by Brittany

This past week we spent the mornings, 8am-1pm, completing what should have been a five-week graduate course in five days. My head feels so full, so I can’t imagine how Jadon’s feels, since he’s had two weeks of tons-of-new-information more than I have.

Basically it was like I never graduated from my Education program; I’d just been on break since May. We learned strategies, made lesson plans, managed imaginary classrooms, wrote objectives with active verbs, presented the lessons to the class while being filmed (which we had to painfully watch & critique later). This actually was a great review for me, and putting previous knowledge into the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) context was really helpful.

And our classes, though jam-packed, were both practical and relevant, which, if you have taken education classes, you will know it is rare to get both of those from one course. We had two amazing professors who both have had SO much time serving in the field teaching EFL and could give us so much helpful knowledge aside from how to teach. Also with us was our in-country supervisor who could answer so many of our questions about teaching in the Czech.

My only complaint is our class did not end with a graduation ceremony, which, if you remember, Jadon has had TWO. Although they assured us we will be getting certificates later in the week.

We also know more details about our actual time to Prague to which I say, Hallelujah! You guys, I need to know things and to plan things (and yes, I know, to let the Lord take control of things). And we are finally getting answers, so I am finally calming down (by minute increments, but we celebrate progress here).

We now know the name of our school: Arabská. It’s a public high school, and we’ve been told we’ll have students anywhere from 11-19 years old. We will both be teaching conversational English. We also know that we will not be given a curriculum. The only direction our school has for us is: Make Them Speak English. So if you have any great speaking activities, we would gladly take them!

The Campus of our School
(Unless the Internet is lying to me, but I Googled, and I trust Google.)

And now today is our first day at the official Teach Beyond orientation, where we are living in a good ol’ Wheaton College dorm room, and we hope to be learning a lot more over the next five days. Things are getting answered and getting exciting! But things are also getting a lot more real. Once this week is over, we are going to have a LOT to process.

Say it with me: ONE MORE WEEK!

Flat-Out Swimming

Written by Jadon:

At this week’s graduation cameras did come out—and a cellphone playing pomp and circumstance—but I’m not surprised, because our class covered every grammar lesson I have ever learned and did it in only five days. (Ps. Having been an English major in college, I’ve sat through quite a few grammar lessons.)

Okay, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. We didn’t have to diagram, thank goodness, but I think everything else was crammed in there somewhere. Seriously, our teacher told us on the first day that when she showed her syllabus to the program director, the director laughed and asked if she was being realistic with how much content she could cover in five days.  Well, we managed to hold to the syllabus, but at some point the brain reaches the limit of how many fancy terms and minutely specific rules it can grasp, and the new info starts dancing jeering circles around your comprehension and memory. As one of my classmates said Friday before lunch, “I don’t think there is any point in pretending that I am still bailing water.  At this point I am flat-out swimming.” (I paraphrase of course. I didn’t write it down on the spot.) But that is how we all felt. From the best of us to the worst of us, by Friday we had had enough.

But despite the blurring pace, everyone contributed and asked question, and we all helped each other, even on the breaks—of which there were many so our brains didn’t solidify into rocks—and we all learned so much about grammar and about how to better help our ESL students understand the English language. And yes, there were audible groans by the end when we had to delve back into yet another grammar topic, but we survived, and we very much earned our golden-embossed seals on those diplomas.

 So hopefully, my brain will get to slow down over the weekend, and will quit thinking about infinitives, modals, past participles, and whether or not to include the “that” in adjective clauses. I have just learned/re-learned so much in the last two weeks, and I’m crossing my fingers that it will all stay up there long enough to get used. And there’s one more class to go…but at least this time I get to take Brittany with me.

Much Better Equipped

Written by Jadon:

Well, I have officially graduated from my first crash-course class in ESL—and by graduated, I mean that we literally had a mini, in-class graduation with one of our teachers calling out names, and each of us filing to the front of the room to receive our official (Wheaton College-sealed and embossed) “diploma” and handshake/hug from both of our teachers while the rest of the class cheered and clapped.  At one point there was chanting and a speech, and I really wouldn’t have been surprised if someone pulled out a camera.  But as silly as this sounds and was, I can’t deny that, even as an almost 25 year old male, it was a bit exciting, and here is why:

Except for helping a few peers find their way through some difficult math problems on quite a few occasions in high school, and this one time I ended up telling a hundred or so African children the story of David and Goliath; I have zero teaching experience. Zero. And here I am about to move overseas to teach English to a bunch of Czechs for a full year.  Granted, Brittany is going too and she has three plus years in a classroom and a Master’s Degree in Teaching—not that she isn’t still nervous—but I was planning on surviving on her expertize.  I believe the term for that is ignorance. Not that it can’t be done that way, but, honestly, I probably would have frozen in the snow due to the fact that I failed to realize I needed shoes much less a coat, hat, and gloves.

And yes, I was a bit nervous/scared to teach, but I was blissfully ignorant of what a teaching position would actually demand of me. So there I was on my first day of class, textbook in hand and massive 3-ring binder filled with half a ream of paper weighing down my backpack.  Seriously, you can kind of tell in the picture, but that binder is full of at least 300 pages of note sheets and interactive handouts. And I should have taken that as a sign for just how unprepared I was to teach ESL for a year.

Five days of class later—that’s 30 hours of work with three to four topics a day, most of which could have been 30 hour courses in and of themselves—we mentally panted to a halt.  But let me tell you, we had the best two teachers.  They pushed us, but they truly want us to succeed.  And even though I am actually more overwhelmed now than I was on Monday morning, I know that I am so so much better equipped to handle my classroom and our year overseas.  Not only do I know how much I learned, but also a couple of the best teachers of ESL in the field are confident in my ability to teach and are proud of my hard work and continued desire to be the best ESL teacher I can be, and that is why our little graduation was so meaningful.

So week one is done, and though I am more overwhelmed, I am way more prepared to lead a classroom.

Now on to week two and a new class: Grammar…Ick.

Day One!

Written by Brittany:

Even though we don’t leave the country for another 2.5 months, today really is day one.

We are currently up in Wheaton, IL at Wheaton College (yes, home of the Billy Graham Center) to begin our training in ESL and our orientation to the program. Since I already have a TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Certificate, I do not have to take the first two weeks of classes, and so Jadon is going them alone. Here is his first day of school pic:

While most people who will read this blog (hi, mom) already know our story, for those of you who don’t, here’s what has been happening with us over the last 8 months.

Last October, a group called TeachOverseas accepted us to spend one year teaching conversational English in Turkey. We were excited about this possibility, especially since I have been longing to get back to Middle Eastern culture (and food!).  We started doing little planning things to get ourselves ready, and then in February we got a call that TeachOverseas had lost funding and would not be sending any teachers in the future. So our plan for the next year and a half suddenly just disappeared.

After that, we tried to figure out if that was a sign; maybe we weren’t supposed to go overseas, and we should stay in our neighborhood and settle down. But a couple days later we were given the name of a different organization, Teach Beyond (http://teachbeyond.org/), and so we gave them a call. It turns out Teach Beyond was hoping to take over some of TeachOverseas’ programs, and they asked if we would be interested in possibly going to Turkey with them instead. So, of course, we signed right up.

The Turkey program was new, and Teach Beyond had to do a lot of logistical work to get it to work, so we waited for three months to find out what would happen, if Turkey would work, and if we would be accepted by this new organization. It was a very difficult time of uncertainty while we tried to patiently wait.

Then, on my birthday (May 8), we finally got the email from Teach Beyond telling us that because of restructuring, Turkey would not work, BUT we were asked to go to Prague instead. All of the frustration and trepidation that had been building over the last three months just disappeared and was replaced with excitement and peace. The Lord worked this out in a crazy way, taking us to a totally different part of the world and with a totally different organization than we had planned, but now we are here, and everything is moving in the right direction, and we are so excited to see what the next year holds!

So, blog readers, hold on to your hats. Cuz here we go!