Teaching Or The One Where Jeff Discovers He Doesn't Like Chalk

So I taught my first 2 classes today! To be honest I was certainly nervous before the first one started, but just moments into the lesson all was good. I have about 25 students in each of my 4 classes. They are all studying their second year of college English (they are all minoring in English to be translators).

The classes are grouped by English ability so on Wednesdays I have the weakest 2 groups. The first group was quite afraid of speaking English at first, but I helped to loosen them up with some humor and reminding them that making mistakes is part of anyone's language learning. Making a mistake is required to get better at any language…

The toughest part of the whole thing is that the faculty department wants me to do my best to keep the students from knowing that I understand any Russian. This is because they want the students to speak English (which of course is what I want too).

It's really hard to not speak Russian with them at all and to not respond to any of their Russian questions… Plus in the faculty office students come in to talk to me when I'm there - and I have to use an interpreter! It's funny, huh?

So we use chalkboards and chalk, and the chalk is really flaky... well, let's just say that I'm covered in chalk most of the time on Wednesdays and Fridays... all over my clothes!