A Pig, A Penis and Pizzas, Oh my! My first week in review...

My first full week of teaching in Turkey is through, and putting my feet up and vegging has never felt so deserved. Though I never pride myself in counting down the days until summer break, or at least the next holiday, I have to admit, the thought crossed my mind a few times.  Let's hope that by the first holiday (November) my students and I have come to some sort of mutual understanding and respect, and that I can make it through the night without nightmares of what could be awaiting me the next day in class.

The week started with a dangerously hot, half-hour, school wide ceremony.  It was all in Turkish, so of course it felt pretty meaningless to me, but I couldn't help thinking this was just too much for all of those kids.  The first days of school in the younger years are always filled with tearful children and parents, so I was not surprised to see many sobbing children clinging to their parents legs.  Although I am totally comfortable with crying children, not being able to communicate with either them or their parents built a kind of will between us that kept me from going over to offer help.  I stayed a few feet away and smiled and waved at the parents and children, hoping to offer the "let me know if you need me to pry him off of you" look. As it turned out, just as the ceremony was ending, and I could just taste the up coming air conditioning blast, one of my bosses asked me to hold a screaming child so his mom could go.  Sure no problem, Mom is asking for help, so I know I am not crossing any boundaries. Except, that this child is nine, which may sound young, but in all actuality nine above the age that I can easily physically restrain.  This child was WAY stronger than me.  Especially when he did the child patented noodle- and -kick.  It took everything I had to pry his fingers off of his mom's wrists, at which point instead of waving goodbye and leaving, mom stood there and cried.  OK.  Once his mom finally turned and walked to the car the child completely lost it.  I wasn't any more help in the comforting department than I was in the picking-him-up-and-getting-him-to-school-department, considering all of my comforting words came in a language that probably sounded like Martian. Just as his Mom got to the gate, another boss told me to give up and let him go, at which point he ran full steam off of the school premises and towards his car.  She said she would take it from there.  Good luck 8-months-prego-lady, you go for it.

Well my first class of the day, was my darling first graders that I told tales of from orientation. You know, the class with the children doing flips off the tables, screaming on the tops of their lungs etc.  Let's just stay that class behaved pretty much as expected.

My next class, surprise, surprise, had my wrestling buddy in it.  He didn't stop crying the whole day.  I soon found out that not only does he not understand me, he doesn't understand ANYBODY.  His family just moved here from Norway, and he speaks no English and no Turkish, so spends 8 hours a day in classrooms with teachers and children he can't communicate.  No wonder he's sad.

My second grade classes were a little better, because they kind of get this whole school deal.  Not that much better though.  I still had to do A LOT of moving seats, confiscating of school materials being used as weapons, and desperately trying to get them to listen.  I went home from that first day feeling like the WORST teacher.

I walked into day two filled with dread.  Please don’t let it be as bad as day one. Please.  And it wasn't! My favorite part of the day was my little wrestling-crying-Norwegian buddy.  Day two, he wasn't sad anymore... No-sir-ee. He was PISSED.  He let us all know how much he hated this situation by throwing every pencil he could find and by making loud farting noises whenever it got kind of quiet in the room.  The rest of the class seemed pretty capable of ignoring him, so I took the pencils that he had, and let him do his thing.  When I had the children draw a picture of them selves and write their names, I gave him one of his pencils back, and smiled like I hadn't noticed a thing.  When I came back around he had drawn a monkey, which I thought was just fine. At least he's busy.  I encouraged him to write his name on his paper, which he refused.  Thinking maybe he didn't understand, I started to spell his name and mock-write it on his paper.  Exasperated at my idiocy, he shoved my hand out of the way and wrote PENIS. Hmmm… "What's that?" I say, innocently. "Penis," he smiles. Alright... He knows at least ONE English word. Awesome. So I flipped over the paper, smiled sweetly again, and said "This time draw you!" And walked away.  five minutes later he proudly brought me his paper. On it was a suspiciously familiar looking girl in a suspiciously familiar looking dress, with the word "PIG" on top.  OK.  We are up to TWO English words.  Since then he has gotten more and more comfortable. He does work in class, and knows his numbers and colors in English.  Perhaps all he needed was to be able to express his anger symbolically.  (On a side note, I'm looking into getting his art framed to hang on my wall.)

For three of my four classes I am beginning to find things that they like.  One class LOVES to draw and color, they all LOVE guessing games (like guess the number, and "Little Mouse, Little Mouse), one class loves dittos and they’re work-books (freaks), and at least two of them like it when I tell stories. My fourth class is still trouble.  Yesterday, by the end of our lesson, I had accomplished NOTHING except to amass a ridiculous amount of scissors that were being used to cut hair, glue that was being used to adhere objects to the table, tattooing pens, flying erasers, paper-clip-chain-whips, and head ache inducing flutes. I have faith that at some point I will find out what works with them, and am hopeful that it doesn't come to Bill Cosby and my dad's favorite "Let the beatings begin!"

As for the pizza part of my week, I am lucky enough to work with a lot of really cool people in the English department.  A bunch of us went out for pizza and a drink on Wednesday, which turned out to be so fun we'll probably do it again every Wednesday. If my weeks don't get easier, at least I'll have that to look forward to.  This week, operation "make Turkish friends" took off. PHEW.