Can I just say, I have a new-found respect for Education Majors?
And teachers.
And anyone who is good at planning, being creative, organizing, and then ACTUALLY EXECUTING SAID PLAN.
Wow.
I just finished my second lesson plan (this one was for a listening lesson), and tomorrow is my first day teaching an ESL class. We’ll see how it goes. I tend to get sidetracked by their interesting stories.
For example:
Today, I “acted” as an ESL student because there was only one tried-and-true one (a Russian man, seemingly in his 70s or 80s, not sure…). So I got the privilege of discussing questions with him, answering multiple choice and true/false questions, and trying (overall) to be engaging.
But the thing is, I started talking to him, and I found out he used to fly planes in Russia.
He was a doctor on a helicopter that flew down to help people IN THE TUNDRA. Yes. The tundra.
I felt a little bit like I’d wandered into a novel.
I asked how long he’d worked there. Fourteen years, he said.
Then I asked if he liked it, and he smiled and just said, it was my job, and I was reminded, again that
we do what we are supposed to do
we do our jobs
we do the right thing
and we don’t always have to like it.
There is so much I could learn from this Russian man.
[P.S. Power-outage in the city today. For blocks. Everyone freaked. Restaurants wouldn’t take cards; people didn’t know what to do with themselves. I was secretly in awe. There’s something I love about remembering that we depend on things, that there are some things out of our control. Like when a huge snowstorm stops life. It’s beautiful, kind of, to remember that we’re finite.]