what I do...

I really do enjoy teaching.  I put a lot of work into planning, supporting, and giving feedback.  I have very little expectation on me in my job, and I am thriving under this freedom.  I have two weeks left to teach before my maternity leave begins.

For Teacher's Day, students were told to write something.  This student wrote: With your smile and your love, you tell us to practice more.  (It doesn't translate well - partly because of language, partly because a 5th grader wrote it).

That said, I just finished grading 200 student exams and the average score was 7 out of 15.

I am going out with a bang.

I was given a made-up program to make-up on my own.  I think they didn’t really know what to do with me – so while everything I had created for the past five years was taken away, I liked the challenge and freedom I had to create something new. 

I was given 8 different books to work with very little direction other than to expose the students to  this new style of teaching/learning.  This “new” style was moving away from ESL teaching methods, which I was never really good at – and back into my area – teaching reading.  I went through the books and drafted a yearly plan that brushed across the surface of as many skills as I could, while exposing the students to different types of texts each week.

I haven't really bothered to worry about this program and all its faults as my efforts have always seemed so inconsequential: my students aren't given a grade in my class, my evaluations are superficial, and my program is separate and thus not comparable to anything else.  Until I stuck an exam in there.  Ugh.  I thought I was doing well enough, with what I was given, but the exam I created had depressing results.

Reading is not math.  It’s not like you master counting, and then move onto adding, then subtracting, and so on.  There is no clear progression of literature skills, it’s more of a depth of learning based on the maturity of the reader. 

Our new school program was sold by a publisher and bought by our school – books, consultant, promises and all.  The publisher was going to raise everybody’s English level by one something-or-other level, the students would take an exam after a few years, and get a certificate.  Certificates are weirdly coveted in Turkey.           

So I am plowing through these texts, trying to give manageable tasks to the students three times a week, which I enjoy, but there is a very glaring problem:  the program is for native English speakers, not English language learners.  I don’t mind this part per se – because it is my style of teaching, to teach reading – but the consultant has specifically told me not to teach vocabulary.  To only teach the words necessary to understanding the text.  This is a philosophy I can understand – and I can teach students how to recognize the structure and purpose of a text.  But as the texts slowly get harder, the percentage of vocabulary they didn’t know is jumping from 30 to 40 to 50 to 60+ percent of the text being unknown vocabulary.  So what started as leading them through a foggy text has ended with me dragging them through it.

I’ve brought this up with our British consultant and he answers me with what a friend called “thought terminating clichés”

“They’ll get there.”

“To quote your infamous George Bush, but mean it, we really want no child left behind.”

or my favorite,

“Well, that’s the dilemma of Scylla and Charybdis.”

He was supposed to observe me last week, but last minute cancelled because I was pregnant and he decided it wasn’t necessary seeing as I was leaving and wouldn’t be able to implement his suggestions.

Human Resources couldn’t find a replacement for me so they are handing over my job to a new Turkish/English teacher.

And, today my work visa has expired.  The school has assured me that the paperwork is in, and on its way. 

Like I said, going out with a bang.