Paul in Moscow was the precursor to Beyond Utah. At the time (2014), I was in my second year of university, and I needed to complete an internship abroad. Having never left the USA, I moved to Moscow, Russia to teach English with International Language Programs (ILP).
Original Post:
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Throughout my blog, I’ve made various comments here and there about being a teacher. But I’ve yet to dedicate a whole post to it — until now!
This first part will be mostly explaining about my teaching schedule and such. For those who don’t care and just want to see pictures of my cute kids, scroll down.
I teach 2 classes during the afternoon. I arrive at my school and eat lunch at 1:30pm. Although I usually come early to prep for my lessons. I don’t know many of the teachers but Jenn and I are friends with the hall monitor named Nadiya. The school has a security guard that we see a lot. But usually we just say “zdrastvuytye” (hello) and “dasvidanya” (goodbye).
I teach my 1st graders first. They have a short break in between our two lessons when they go grab a snack from the cafeteria. Sometimes they bring me one back. 🙂
I took this picture today! I usually have around 7 kids, but only 3 made it into the picture. Haha. From left to right, Albert, Olya, and Fima. They were eating/drinking a “cocktail” from snack time. I’m not sure what exactly it was, but it definitely was more like sparkling cider.
My second class is my kindergartners. Jenn and I team teach. We have anywhere from 5 to 12 kids. We just wait and see who shows up. Haha. We teach them 2 lessons each, for a total 4 lessons in 2 hours. They have a snack time too — but at dinner time so it’s their dinner.
Today we had 11 kids, which we split into two groups. I got this picture from the second group. From left to right: Sonya, Dariya, Dyoma, Nika, Tanya, and Margarita.
And then here’s just a couple individual pictures.
Last week we were learning about snow gear and Jenn snapped a photo of David wearing my snow boots.
They all had a lot of fun with that activity. They took turns trying on different pieces of my snowy weather clothes while we talked about what each item was used for. I hope none of them have lice, because my beenie got passed around a lot. And I saw one kid pick his boogers before he put on my gloves… Don’t worry, I checked and he didn’t leave any behind. But I think I’ll wait another week or so to let ALL the germs die out.
Oh. If you glance back up to that photo of David, you will notice I’m wearing little blue booties over my feet. Russians are very particular about having shoes indoors. You either put on booties, or wear shoes specifically for indoor use only. At the main school, I change into my black vans as “indoor shoes” and at the Kindergarten (in a separate building) we are required to wear the booties. It’s quite the hassle, but we’re used to it!
And I think that’s a pretty basic insight into my life as a teacher. 🙂 I love being here in Moscow. My kids are great. My ILP family is amazing. I couldn’t be happier with my decision to spend this semester volunteering abroad.Â
Love from Russia,
Paul