At the chalkface

I should really say “at the dry-erase face” because most of the classrooms have white-boards with pre-dampened rags and erasers… no markers though. Teachers bring their own from the department. I’ve definitely left behind at least one dry-erase marker in a classroom. I’m not supposed to do that. Tsk tsk.

My experiences as a teacher so far have been pretty mixed, but I’m feeling better about it in general now than I was before leaving for Moscow. My last class before that trip was in the early afternoon on October 2^nd, a Friday. I had instructed my group of second-year students to give oral reports about Malcolm X. Even though they were supposed to have prepared these at home, I knew most of them would have, as usual, neglected their homework completely. So, rather than subject one student to a humiliating public punishment for something of which the whole class was guilty, I decided to split the class into groups, have each group prepare a speech together, and then choose its most ready and able member to actually deliver it.

Even after I made these allowances, the first two speeches which turned out to be just shy of abysmal, and the last one was read (not even recited by memory) straight from the information I’d given them as a guide. Grammar-wise, content-wise, style-wise... they just obviously hadn’t prepared. I know I was more visibly disappointed than I’d ever been in front of them, but it was hard to tell if they would react by getting huffy or by stepping up their work. I just cut the last student off, and told everyone sternly that I was very cross and they’d all better be prepared next week or else… Or else what? Time-out? No recess? Principal’s office? The thing is, I have very little say in their final grades. In fact, that group of second-years is one of the ones I’m sharing with another cathedra-member, a 24-year-old junior teacher, Jevgenija (of whom more in the following post). She knows and I know and the students know that she’s the one who will have the final word in how they’re evaluated, and she couldn’t be there that day.

I was worried that I’d already been too lax with them and couldn’t credibly change that dynamic now. I’d already noticed that most of the students I’d taught or guest-taught greeted me in the halls by saying “Privjet”, which, generally, is too familiar for a student to use with a teacher. I would feel ridiculous telling them to address me formally, especially since my social life is already uneventful enough that I don’t want to discourage people from being friendly. Is that unprofessional? Maybe not if the goal is “mutual understanding”, as stated in the Fulbright literature. But anyway, I wondered how I could possibly motivate them if they just saw me as a peer.

Also discouraging was the embarrassingly low rate of attendance at my lectures that week. Only two students had showed up to the elective course I’m teaching on the American party system. (That was out of fourteen in the whole class, which seems to be a normal class size here.)

I’m feeling a little better about these things now. This week I had nine students come (actually not a bad showing) to the same class where I’d had two the week before, and although attendance was down for the second-year group (the oral reports group), their work was much better that day. It might have been because the other teacher, Jevgenija, came and observed that day, but I like to think it’s just because they didn’t want to disappoint me again.

I’ve also observed some other teachers’ classes, and I feel like I’m getting a better sense for what makes these students tick. We’ll see if that wisdom does me any good by the time I post again.