First Week

Given that most of my teaching experience has been derived from tutoring and the fact that I have never taught a group of children in a classroom setting, going into class on that first day of teaching was daunting. Adding to my inexperience in the classroom was the obvious language barrier.  I knew and still know only a few Turkish words.  Furthermore, the wifi signal in my class was not strong enough to allow me to utilize Google Translate.  Thankfully, my students had a rudimentary knowledge of English, and for the most part, could understand basic English if I spoke loudly and clearly enough (or if I wrote words on the board). My first challenge involved engaging them and capturing their attention—a very trying task given their hyperactivity.  They kept chattering away in Turkish, so I decided to incentivize talking in English and behaving by instituting a strike system for the habits that define them as children but unfortunately disrupt the class and the learning process—getting up from their seats, throwing projectiles, calling out answers, etc.  The group with the least strikes would be treated to ice cream every Friday.  Though the incentivization did not completely iron out the issues that were initially present—after all, they are children—it did help me calm them when I needed to.  In fact, some students began to call out others in their group for their behavior.

Overall, the children are absolutely lovely to be around. They are extremely respectful and polite despite their hyperactive natures.  On Friday, instead of treating only one group to ice cream, I bought the whole class ice cream.  Many of them thanked me individually and I could see in their eyes that they really meant it.  I look forward to the two weeks of teaching that remain.