Warning this post may contain traces of Kids and Teenagers

I had been meaning to write a post reporting on the Dnipro football game that I experienced recently. However due to technical difficulties (read camera) I am delaying this.

Much more importantly I taught my first classes today! The first was "Kids level 2" and the second was Pre-Intermediate teenagers (12-16). The first class was certainly an experience, being my first monolingual class (where all the students spoke the same language) having students at a lower level than I had ever taught before and finally my first Kids TEFL class made for a potent cocktail. Despite many attempts to prevent the students from speaking in Russian it was always a struggle against the tide.

I am uncertain if being able to know a few basic question words of Russian was a help or a hindrance. On the one hand it allowed me to work out some of their questions and issues but on the other when they could tell guessed I could understand something they carried on saying that. I did stress later on that I didn't understand but by that point the damage may well have already been done.

The other main issue seamed to be controlling two of the young boys in their confused attempts at impressing the poor sole girl there. Although this came out in several ways the most noticeable was fighting with each other over who would get to work with her. Mean while her brother quietly stepped in. Despite all this it was great to finally get to teach a class and I really enjoyed being able to be silly with kids.

In the second class Edward Cullen managed to cause a lot of problems (He always interfering) by being loved and hated by different students with VERY strong opinions. I also learnt a bit about a Ukrainian pop due called Потап и Настя Каменских (or Potap and Natasyha Kamenskih). the main issue with the class was a change in the formate of lessons so that they now had no breaks in the middle but last slightly shorter. Although the confusion surrounding the word Impatient which sounded like Impotent to one Ukrainian students ears.


Tomorrow I have some adults to teach (3 groups all at the same level and all at the same point! meaning a lot less preparation time.) and will have doubled my total teaching English as a foreign language experience which will be a nice mile stone to achieve. Until then....good night