A Batson's Education: First Week of Teaching

Beautiful Fall Day in Białystok

TL;DR or Quick Summary

My first week of teaching was more or less a success! Nobody died or cried.
There are already 100 small things I would do differently if I could go back, but that's okay.
The biggest challenge was figuring out what materials students had covered before and what material they were expected to cover this semester.
Polish students, much like American students, will laugh at you when you read the Itsy Bitsy Spider out loud.

Adventures Before Teaching

The weekend before I started teaching, I traveled to Poznan, another city in Poland, to visit some other Fulbrighters. Poznan is about 5 hours west of Białystok by train with one train transfer, which is not too bad. Unfortunately, I did not realize how seriously Poles take their seat assignments on trains. On the first train I either found my correct seat by luck (small chance) or no one called me out on it (more likely). The second train, however, was a very different story.

One of Poznan's Many Green Spaces

Waiting for the Daily Goat Battle!

On the second train, I ended up moving cabins twice (think Hogwarts Express) because I was in the wrong seat. My moving caused a chain reaction of people having to move on an already full train. Overall, I think four or five people ended up moving. One guy was in the wrong train car, the other didn't even have a ticket, and others were just sitting where ever. Fortunately, there was a helpful German business man who did most of the talking and accompanied me on the quest for my seat.

Fancy Coffee and Friends in Poznan

Poznan was a great city! There are three Fulbrighters living there and one more came down from his frozen home on the Baltic Sea. In Poznan, we did a lot of walking, beer drinking, and taking the scenic route. We made St. Martin's Croissants (a local specialty), explored the 'Latin' club scene, and even went to some restaurants and juice bars that were very reminiscent of Austin.

The city symbol of Poznan is the most noble of animals, the goat! Legends say that during the early years of Poznan, two goats escaped to the top of the tower in the town square and began battling. The local king though this was hilarious and declared the goat to be the symbol of Poznan. Today, there are two mechanical goats who come out of the tower at noon and battle each other for the whole town to see.

Football Game in Białystok

After a week of being in Białystok without seeing many people my age, it was a great and much needed break to spend time with some friends. While I really do like Białystok, I was very jealous that the Fulbrighters in Poznan had each other in the same city.

On Sunday night, before my first class, I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the local Białystok football (soccer) team game. I attended the game the game with my mentor's husband and some of their friends. While the score ended up being an record setting 0-0, I still enjoyed the game. There is a section of fans called the 'razor blades' who are notorious for their fanaticism; they were standing and screaming convoluted cheers the whole game (much like Texas football fans). Overall it was a very fun experience and I am looking forward to my next game.

This was the first half of all of my classes

On to Teaching!

Although I had prepared for the first week pretty thoroughly, I was still nervous about my first week of classes. My main concerns were that I simply didn't know the system very well; I didn't know what a typical class was like, how classes were usually structured, what kinds of expectations the professors had of students and vice versa, and any number of small things. I was worried that what I was going to do would just be so off base that students wouldn't respond. As it turns out, things went well and now my students have seen an American do his best to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider to a class of college students.

As my schedule is right now, I have one class everyday. Tuesday -Thursday my classes are at 8:00am (yay early mornings...) while Mondays and Fridays start a bit later. While things might change during add/drop period, I think my schedule is pretty set. All of my classes went well (nobody died or cried), but the Friday class was a lot more organized than my Monday class. I found there were a lot of differences between Polish and American university classes, but there were also many similarities.

Difference in Classrooms and Equipment

The first difference I noticed was that most rooms do not have a projector or whiteboard, although all of my rooms have had a chalkboard. Teaching without a projector is not something that I have had to do before and will take some adjustment. Instead of being able to click a button and have pictures and text appear, I have to write it all out, spelling mistakes and poor drawings included. Making some spelling mistakes on the first day did help the students see me as an actual person but does not help me seem like a competent professor. (In case you were wondering I forgot to put the final 'n' on information.)

Another difference is that all rooms are locked at all times. I have to visit the key-masters in order to get a key for the classrooms or my office. This caused several problems because the rooms are a combination of multi-digit numbers and letters and the key-masters (while incredibly nice) do not speak English. There was a lot of finger counting and writing involved. By Friday however, they were prepared when they saw me approaching and handled me a pen and some paper right away; I think I will bring them some breakfast sweets sometime soon to show my appreciation.

My reaction to first day introductions vs. my
student's reactions.

What Did I Actually Teach?

As any college student knows, the first day of class is syllabus day, where nothing important really happens and no real content is taught. Not so in my class! During the first half of class we did introductions and discussed the syllabus. Through their introductions, I learned that many students like horses, are a big fan of the color pink (one student said 80% of her wardrobe is pink), play in a band or in a semi-professional context, are named Ola (seriously I think I have 7 Olas), want to be professional translators, and hate public speaking.

I am glad I had them all introduce themselves because it gave me an idea of their English proficiency (they can all communicate well, even if they would not admit it) and it set the expectation that public speaking in class would be a common occurrence. When I introduced myself, I usually mentioned just how mild the winters in Texas are; this usually evoked laughter and smiles from my students as they told me what winter would be like here. Several wished me good luck. After introductions and reviewing the syllabus, we moved onto content.

2nd Year Writing

In my 2nd year academic writing classes, we discussed the basic elements of formal writing (thesis statements, claims, supporting arguments) and then practiced writing thesis statements for different topics. While they were not super excited to practice thesis statements, they all seemed to have a good handle on the concept.

After class, I talked to one of the professors who typically teaches the 2nd year writing courses, and he suggested making shifting the class to focus more on literary analysis; during their 1st year writing courses, students perfected the art of the 5 paragraph essay (in theory) and this year should focus more on analysis. While it is never fun to change my plans, this was very good information to have. I think I will have students read some short stories and practice analyzing theme, main idea, and all those other literary ideas I thought I had escaped.

3rd Year Integrated Skills

My 3rd year integrated skills class is a course that focuses on listening, speaking, and reading. I will have the most liberty in this class to design lessons and shape the curriculum. I hope to include lessons on American politics (something important is happening this year), sports, and differences in culture. I decided to first focus on descriptive writing. I divided the class into pairs; in each pair was a speaker and an artist. I would draw and an abstract shape on the board and the speaker would have to describe it to the artist (the artist could not see the board). The wining group got some Reese's Cups straight from America.

After a slow start, the activity was a big success. The students really got into the game and it was a good opportunity to teach vocabulary (edge, corner, hexagon, intersect, solid line, dashed line) that would otherwise be pretty dry.

4th Year Writing

You are almost done reading! I know this is a long post!

My 4th year writing classes are actually first year masters students (that's just how things are organized here). Since these students are going to have to write a substantial research paper next year, my goal for this year is to help them with their paper research paper writing skills. This will include summarizing, extracting relevant information, deriving conclusions, and supporting claims with evidence.

This week I started with summarizing. I wanted to start the class off on a light note, so I decided to practice summarizing nursery rhymes. I did not realize however, that because there was no projector, I would have to read the nursery rhymes out loud; the three that I chose were the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Humpty Dumpty, and Jack and Jill. After reciting the Itsy Bitsy Spider, I even got a (only mildly ironic) round of applause!

I am looking forward to continuing to get to know the students and to improve my English teaching abilities. Next week I plan for things to have more structure and purpose. However, I know that I will not have a firm idea of how I want the class to run until the end of the semester.