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Plums

Monday 15 September 1997

It’s amazing how quickly plums can roll. You would think that since they’re not really round but more oblong—more like a small American football than a soccer ball—that they wouldn’t roll as much as they would wobble, doing a strange dance which could look like a drunken lame man hobbling down the street. But they did scoot through the bus with amazing speed.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

When the bag full of plums sitting in the aisle tipped over, I didn’t imagine the comedy of the ensuing scene. Its owner, a drunken Polish man in dire need of a belt, was completely obvious to the fact that his plums were making their way throughout the bus, rolling down the aisle and under people’s feet. Finally, whether by intuition or chance, he realized what was happening and with a groggy grunt he turned around, bent over and began picking up the plums. First, he had to put the bag back up, and this resulted in an immediate and new deluge of plums.

Containing my own amusement—for it’s not a good idea to laugh at a drunk man who’s losing all his plums—I helped him put the bag back up and then grabbed a few of the plums and plunked them back into his bag.

After he replaced the fruit in his immediate reach, he began moving people’s legs aside with a gruff “Przepraszam” as he lurched for the plums which had rolled under passengers’ chairs. Pleased with the unexpected entertainment, we sober riders which him, glancing up occasionally to smile at each other as if to say, “If only this poor guy knew how stupid he looks.”

Finally he retrieved all the fruit that was within a few feet of him, but then he revealed just how tenacious he could be. Swaying with the bus which, combined with the high level of alcohol coursing through his veins, seemed to make him look a shade of nauseous green which is not healthy even for folks with the strongest stomachs, he stood up and stumbled toward the front of the bus, grasping the chairs for balance.

His destination: a small trove of plums which had rolled all the way to the front of the bus.

He brought back three or four, dropped them in his bag which he carefully rearranged to prevent the catastrophe from happening again, then slumped down into the floor—there were no empty seats—and leaned over in a drunken stupor. A lone plum, which had somehow eluded the man, sat balanced in the middle of the isle. Though the bus was swaying back and forth fiercely and though his comrades had set an amusing president, the plum did not roll at all but sat still, content to be alone and free.

And that was what kept me amused for the rest of the bus ride from Kraków.

Journals

Thursday 11 September 1997

I got journals from IIB and IIIA today. I’ve already graded the journals from IIIA but I really dread starting on the big stack from IIB. It takes such a long time to grade those things because I always want to be fair. I don’t know if it’s possible in such a subjective thing as journals, but I try nonetheless. In some ways I wonder if they’re more trouble than they’re worth. That’s really a stupid thing to think because it does a great deal of good for the students—it provides an opportunity for them to write without worrying about mistakes or the eventual grade (for correctness, that is). The question is not whether or not to continue the assignment, but how to grade it more quickly and effectively.

I just noticed a drawback to the new grading system I’m using this year. I can’t get any kind of grade whatsoever until I have at least one grade in each area (test, journal, projects, etc). That will mean that we have to give a lot of assignments to each class. That won’t be too difficult, but it will be terribly time consuming to grade all those things and then put the grades in the computer.

One thing is certain: I am not doing all the grading like I did last year. I did it because I had so much more free time than Danuta did, but this year I’m going to get her to grade a few things. Of course that wasn’t the only reason: I was also worried that she would grade them too harshly. I always thought of those tests she gave IIB last year—some students received no credit whatsoever. I could never convince her that giving no credit for a test item is a bad idea. Perhaps this year I can talk her into it—but she is so stubborn at times.

Light

Wednesday 10 September 1997

I survived the first of many Wednesdays, all of which will certainly be hellish. Eight lessons without a break is tough. But I will admit that it wasn’t as tough as I was expecting. I rather enjoyed each class, most of which are with the first class (group A, B, or C). I have IIIA to begin with, and then I have only first year students. And just as I did last year, I’m finding that I really like the first class. They’re all great, and even though I thought I had a good start with the first classes last year, I think I’m doing much better this year. I’m really connecting with them more effectively than I did last year.

I’m trying to learn students’ names of course, and there are already a few who stand out. In IA there’s a girl named Alina who has really marvelous English and seems eager and willing to use it. (I was surprised by the willingness of the whole class to use English, to be honest.) Rafał in IB reminds me of someone with his good-hearted mischievousness, but I cannot remember who. (Dominik during practicum in Radom?) In IC there’s Ba ka who reminds me of Żaneta from IIA. They even look similar.

I find now that the despression of Sunday night seems so very far away. I’ve no idea how I could have felt so bad. I look around and I think of how I’ll miss this place, even during next summer while I’m back in America. I’ll miss speaking Polish and teaching English. And I’ll even miss the smallness of this place, that which can cause such boredom if I’m not careful.

Today I got both class IB and IC to speak a little English. It was so simple, but it sounded so wonderful. They were only saying things like, “This is Bob,” or “What’s his name?” But to hear that from someone who has never before put together that many words in English was almost magical. I had forgotten how good I felt last year when IIB was beginning to say a little bit in English. It is that which makes me prefer first year classes in some way. To begin with, their easier to prepare for. But more importantly, I get a much greater sense of accomplishment from working with them.

New Classes

Tuesday 9 September 1997

We had the opportunity to meet two of the three first classes today—IA and IC. It turns out that there are not as many students from class VIII that I taught last year as I thought there would. I recognized a few faces, but not many. Strangely enough there are almost as many boys as there are girls in that class. That’s a shock for Lipnica, especially when one considers both second classes and third class. I began talking to them in English and then Danuta gave a few rules and regulations in Polish. I think it will be a good class, but Danuta said it would be a difficult class. “Why?” I asked. “Because they responded much like IIIB always does,” she answered. I pointed out that it’s impossible to judge them from only one short class which had almost no interaction at all.

Class IC is a different story altogether. There are twenty-eight students in that class, and not a single boy. I walked in and said, “Hello girls and girls!” I talked to them in Polish at first to show them that my Polish is not perfect but it is understandable. I made the point that I don’t really worry about my mistakes because if I did, I would never be able to say anything. I said also that they will speak English much like I was speaking Polish. “We’ll speak like children and make a lot of mistakes, but it’s not a bad thing. We [Danuta and I] will never say you’re a bad student because you make mistakes.” I tried to encourage them and show them that making stupid mistakes—even funny mistakes—is to be expected. They were fairly quiet, but I think it was simply from nerves and not really from anything else. I now have the experience of IB last year to remind me that classes that begin with such difficulty often turn out to be the most rewarding.

I had IIIA play “Taboo” today and they were really speaking a lot. I heard more English in those forty-five minutes than I’ve heard in a very long time. I was thrilled, and it seemed that they were actually enjoying it. I really don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow, but I’m not as worried about it now. I realize that they are willing to speak English if they have such tasks that allow them to make their own constructions as they need to.

Planning and Lonliness

Sunday 7 September 1997

Part of the problem is loneliness. I haven’t seen anyone today and I don’t know that I will. I’m thinking about going across the street, but what prevents me from doing that is the simple understanding that I still haven’t finished planning for tomorrow. I could say to myself, “You don’t have class until 9:50 tomorrow morning. You can wait and throw something together then.” But that’s exactly what I did last year and where did it get me? What did I accomplish? What did the students learn? How as my sanity? So I want to try to finish writing a lesson plan for tomorrow. But I know (or rather, “I expect”) that when I go back and sit down with a fresh outlook (as fresh as I can manage at this point), I’ll run into the same brick wall. “What the hell am I going to do tomorrow?”

That was a nightly battle last year and I assume that it’s going to be the same way this year. Every evening I struggled to come up with a lesson, forty-five minutes of business and productivity. When I finally came up with something and finished all the planning, I thought, “Whew—did it again. But I’ve no idea where I’ll get another activity from.” Yet somehow, I always managed to come up with something. It’s just that toward the end of the year, my “somethings” were turning out to be rather boring and ineffective. The students didn’t respond well at all and I was left wondering what the hell I could do differently. Part of my trouble now is that the same thing is happening at the beginning of the year. I think, “Well, I survived about four or five weeks of that last year, but I can’t do nine or ten months of it this year.”

I just don’t know what the problem is. Is it that I’m not doing enough planning? Am I leaving to much up to chance? Am I too often saying, “Okay, that’s a good idea but I’ll improvise the finer details tomorrow during the lesson”? Am I planning with the wrong objective? What is my objective? I guess if I’m honest, I’m still running on last year’s fourth-quarter improvisational objective: “Let’s fill these forty-five minutes.” I need to shift my priorities and not worry so much about filling the time as teaching them English and giving them opportunities to use the language authentically. […]

Part of the problem I have is with providing structure within the lesson. I come up with fairly good ideas for activities, but I then expect (today’s magic word) the students do come up with too much stuff on their own. I provide only the barest frame and then expect them to go out and buy the paint and canvas, think of a proper subject, and finish the piece of art. Take my last lesson with IIIA for example. I told them that since we weren’t going to be using books this year, we must decide on what we want to study and how. Now that was entirely too broad of a topic. They really don’t know what the possibilities are (both in subject matter and methodology) and so to expect them to discuss that (even with the gimick of “alter egoes”) was asking entirely too much.

I also don’t have enough of a long-term plan. I told IIIA that I hope to give them a syllabus at some point which gives them at least a rough idea of what we will be doing in the coming weeks. I need also to establish a routine, a weekly schedule so that I have some idea of where I need to go with the lesson before I even start planning it. And yet I’m really not sure how to go about doing that.

Once again, I know what I need (more structure; more long-term planning; more control over the class; more enthusiasm from my students), but I’ve no idea how to go about achieving these things. It’s the seemingly unbridgeable gap between theory and praxis. Even with a year’s experience, I don’t know how to overcome these problems.

I’ve no idea.

I’ve no ideas.

I’ve no ideal.

Early Termination

Tuesday 2 September 1997

I rode to Jabłonka this afternoon to meet the new volunteer. I went yesterday but no one was home. I thought I’d seen him Friday night when I was going to Nowy Targ and when I knocked on his door—his name, for the sake of simplicity, is Evan—I was surprised to see an older man and behind him a tall, young man.

I asked, “Are you the new volunteer?”

And for a moment I thought I’d just made a fool of myself, for he looked at me with the strangest expression on his face. My mind switched immediately to Polish so that I could explain what happened, but he responded in time. I can’t remember exactly what I said—something like, “I just thought I’d drop by and introduce myself.”

He responded haltingly, “Well, you’ve kind of come at a strange time.” My first thought was that he was going to go out with the older gentleman—his counterpart, I assumed. But he continued, “Because I’m ET-ing.”

“Perhaps there’s been a family emergency or something,” I thought.

However, I was wrong. He just didn’t like teaching—didn’t feel at all prepared, he said. I stayed and we talked for a few minutes, but that was about all I got out of him. I wasn’t really prying, for it is certainly none of my business. He’s going back to go to grad school.

In some ways the judgmental part of me screams, “What a wimp! He didn’t even last a week!” Yet I’ve no idea what was going on in his head and what kind of person he was. I just thought that it could have been one of those ET placements, like with that older lady in our group (whose name I can’t remember). Another part of me feels genuine sympathy for the kids in Jabłonka and the remaining teacher. When he was telling me why he was going, saying things like, “I just asked myself, ‘Where are you going to be happier in two years? In a year? In a month?’” I will admit that I was thinking, “Well, you might be happier, but what about the kids here? What will be best for them?”

Has a PCV made a commitment when he has gone to site? I think so, at least an implied commitment. I don’t think the PC administration tells potential schools during the initial interviews, “This is just a potential English teacher. S/he will come here and take a look around, and maybe s/he’ll stay, maybe not.” Of course I could be completely wrong. They could tell the schools something very similar to that—don’t get your hopes up, I guess.

All the same, I compare this to my own experience and mindset and I feel like he’s giving up entirely too soon. Of course it’s tough at first, but how can you judge an experience after only three days? If he had such serious doubts, wouldn’t they have shown themselves earlier? During training? Yet how can I judge such a thing? I’m only projecting—nothing constructive at all. One fact that I really haven’t considered that much is Evan’s counterpart, who was a little strange. I guess I might have had an entirely different experience if Danuta was a freak.