A day in the life
Trip Start
Apr 14, 2006
1
64
102
Trip End
Jul 2008
Belitsa,
Bulgaria
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
9 AM - I don't teach in the mornings so I wake up relatively late - the school day starts at 7:30, so my colleagues and other volunteers wake up much earlier than me. Occasionally I go for a run, but not as often as I should.
10 AM I try to get my lazy butt out the door by 10 to go to one of the cafes in the center, as I find I am much more productive outside my apartment without the lure of the internet (email, youtube, various bejeweled style games, etc.) I spend about a half hour lesson planning for the day since I usually didn't do my work the night before. I also spend between a half hour and hour reading the Economist, which counts as part of my daily studying quota - I'm studying for the Foreign Service Exam which I'll take in April at the the embassy in Sofia, I might want to be a diplomat when I grow up, but let's not talk about that right now. Usually once a week I meet with one of my colleagues around 11 or 12 because they couldnt make it that week to my English class, and I give them a short lesson. This is my strategy to make sure I don't have absenses in my adult classes - it shows that I'm serious about them coming to every class and if they miss a class they still have to find time to do the work. This strategy works best with my colleagues, because I'm more likely to see them to arrange a time to meet. This isn't true of my other adult classes, and they never call me even tho they all have my cell phone number.
12:30 Go home and make a small lunch, play around on the internet.
1:30 Go to school and type up and print quizzes for my classes that day. Every day each class has a five minute quiz on what we studied the week before. This is my strategy to make sure they come on time, since in Bulgaria there's no such thing as detentions or other discipline measures. If they come more than five minutes late they fail the quiz, since they missed it. It works.
2:00-5:00/5:30 Teaching. I have 2 groups a day. Since I teach each group for an hour and a half this is like 4 class hours (a normal class hour is 40 mintues.) I only see each group once a week, which I really hate. It makes our progress so slow, and if some kids are sick one day or there is a school holiday that day I go two weeks without seeing them. I have one group each from 5th through 11th grade, and on Mondays I teach a group of 10 of my colleagues at 4:00
6:00-7:30 On Mondays and Tuesdays I teach two different adult evening classes. I have mixed feelings about these classes (and my teacher class.) On the one hand it is obvious that they review more at home and that they care more about learning, compared to the kids. They are old enough to realize how important learning english is. On the other hand they are very challenging groups because their abilities vary so much. Some of my adults learn very fast (a few are starting at a higher level, even tho we begin with the alphabet on day one,) and I have a couple in each group who learn painfully slow. I refuse to leave behind the slow learners, so it makes teaching the group challenging. So on Wednesdays at this time I have a Bulgarian lesson with Maria, one of the Bulgarian teachers at the school. We are getting to be really good friends. She comes to my class on Monday afternoons, her husband comes to my evening class on Tuesdays, and her son is in my 6th grade class. And I'm friends with her 3 year old daughter Alli. After the lesson she feeds me dinner. For now my Thursday evenings are free, but after the holidays I'll add one more adult class for the teachers at the other school in Belitsa (there are 2) So I'll be even busier.
7:30 on Go home, eat dinner, grade quizzes, maybe do some lesson planning or studying, play on the internet, maybe watch a movie i've downloaded offline. Once or twice a week I go to the cafe in the center of town (which Maria, my Bulgarian tutor owns) with my friends Gosho, Rosi and Assen. I make sure to go to bed by 12 - once in bed I read Harry Potter. I'm currently working on the first book in Bulgarian. It's not easy but I'm learning tons of new words. And what can I say, I love Harry Potter.
