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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

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

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

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.

Cultural Adventures

I went to Jabłonka this morning to the targ. I wanted to buy a zoom lens. I had talked to the camera guy there a few weeks ago, and he said that he’d have one for me. Well, he couldn’t find one. So I started back to the bus stop empty handed. It was a little before nine. I was thinking there was a bus at nine — no, the next one wasn’t until ten. I was irritated because like an ass I had forgotten to bring anything to read. (Rule of thumb when traveling in Poland: Always have something to read, for you’ll do a lot of waiting.) I was so irritated at the prospect of losing a whole hour that I paid 12 z to take a taxi back home. That’s exactly ten times what it would have cost by bus. Well, ten times, and an hour less. I’m coming to realize that time is much more valuable than money. The fool who said “Time is money,” got it backwards.

I had him stop just before getting to my apartment because I didn’t want anyone to see me getting out of a taxi. Someone in the gmina saw me with my computer and made a comment, “Jesteś bogaty,” (“You’re rich!” of course), so I didn’t want anyone seeing me pay ten times what I could have paid if I’d simply waiting for the bus. I guess it’s a bit silly to go around worrying what other people think, but I don’t want them to resent me for waltzing into the village and making more money than the average person here (which I do, though not by much).

4:36 p.m.

I finished checking the journals today. There are still a few who have not turned them in, though. I was both relieved and disturbed to find that Iwona also copied some stuff out of a book for journal entries. It relieves me because now I don’t have to face Tom alone. He can be belligerent and I was expecting to take hell from him for “reading” the journal. Now I can address the whole class about the problem (without mentioning names, of course). The down side of this is that I would not have expected Iwona, of all people, to have done such a thing. I’m sure she only did it because she felt she couldn’t write that much on her own; I don’t think it was pure laziness as much as a lack of self-confidence. The funny thing is, Iwona copied her stuff straight out of the book (including the bit about Paul Newman).

What will I do about it? I will talk to the class and present my idea (although it will not be up for vote, like that made it sound): I hereby reserve the right to read any suspicious looking journal entry to determine whether or not the student in question actually wrote the entry him/herself. I will not read the journals for pleasure, but I feel that it is necessary to make this small adjustment. I think I might say that if I determine that anything has been copied from a book without proper acknowledgement (in other words, plagarized), that person will get a zero for that particular journal grade. It’s harsh, and it’s demanding, but I don’t want any slacking on this. Plagiarism is a serious issue, even in a seemingly minor case like this.

More Thoughts about Students

Classes went acceptably well, but IIB wasn’t as good as I would like. I guess it could have been worse, but they were a little more disruptive than in the past, despite the fact that I went with my hard-line disciplinarian method. I guess I can’t always have them quiet. I began “going to” with them, and I think it caused them some trouble initially. I had to explain that sometimes it’s present continuous (I’m going to the store.) but sometimes it is simply the future tense. “The key,” I told them, “Is whether there is a verb following ‘to.’” I guess we’ll see soon enough whether they get it or not. IB had a little bit of difficulty with today’s lesson. It was admittedly hard, for I plunged headlong into irregular simple past tense forms and I think it was a bit much. I knew it was a tough topic and so I followed the book exactly, for sometimes I change things (or don’t even refer to the book until the end) and it occasionally makes things more difficult. However, the book did a sufficient job of confusing them anyway. The activity was a listening activity with a guy speaking in first person about the 80’s and they had to fill in a little blurb written in third person. While the forms for the simple past are the same for all persons, it was still a bit tricky for them. In IA we reviewed for the test which is coming up Monday. It was a boring lesson, but I found out (fortunately) that they are still having trouble with when to use a/an, the, or nothing. Danuta’s going to go over it tomorrow.

I just saw Bożena from IB walking along with Bogusia and someone else (I didn’t see who, but I think it was Kaszka). I waved with a big smile; she waved back, smiling too. I think most of the kids like me. I am glad, for it makes my job easier. I believe they think I’m a little crazy. Today, for instance, as I was explaining the irregular simple past to IB, I was walking around picking up stuff and dropping it, saying, “What is this?” (I was of course wanting them to say, “drop.” I’m not sure they’d had that verb before, though.) I walked up to Ela (little Ela in group B) and “kissed” her: I made a smooching sound in her direction. I didn’t need to ask, “What’s that?” for everyone answered immediately, “Kiss!”

It’s strange to be able to sit here and watch all my students leave school. The miracle of familiarity always makes me smile. Before I knew their names or anything about their personalities, I would only watch with a fleeting interest. But now I sit and think, “Oh, there’s Grzegorz. He is rather outgoing now. That’s strange because he’s often so quiet in class.” They’re not just faces. I guess it’s simply that they are a part of my life now, and it is more that than “the miracle of familiarity.”

Teaching Thoughts

I checked IIA’s journals tonight. I told them I wouldn’t read them, and I didn’t. But as I counted entries, I did make sure that every entry had at least a little something in English. And that’s when the trouble hit. As I was reading through Tom’s I noticed a word that didn’t seem like something that would be in his vocabulary: constitute. I skimmed some more. I noticed more words that seem out of his vocabulary. So finally I broke down and just read a passage. It seems that he copied this out of something, though I’m not quite sure what. It is simply not his writing. So I must decide what to do. If I say something, he will say, “You read it and you said you wouldn’t! You lied!” And no matter how I explain things, I will lose trust with some people. But I certainly cannot let him get by with it. I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see what he has to say about it.

I’ve been thinking about the whole journal issue. Following Mr. Watson’s example, I read the journals I had my seniors keep while student teaching. I told them that if there was something they didn’t want me to read, just note it in the margin and I said I wouldn’t read it. But knowing that someone else is going to be reading what you write will drastically change what you write. Immediately you have an audience, whereas before you’re writing only for yourself. What are the advantages of reading them? I’ll get to know my students better, and it often leads to a more personal relationship with the students. Many of the kids in Mr. DePriest’s class wrote things in their journals (without asking me not to read) that they would not say to me in person.

I decided to look at my journal and see what I wrote about the journals while I was student teaching. I didn’t find anything, but ended up reading the most of the entries for October, November, and December. […] I was also surprised that at that time I was still considering myself a Christian. Or at least I was thinking that I wanted to be a Christian. I was still trying to work out some of the difficulties which have now grown.

Anyway, back to the journal topic: I don’t know what to do about Tom. But I must admit that the little I caught as I counted the entries whetted my appetite and I would really like to read some of their entries. It is not even a temptation, though. I am trying so hard to earn their trust and I will not do anything which could risk that. Which is why I am so worried about what to do about Tom. I’ll just have to talk to him, I guess.

I am in a strangely peaceful mood. I read about all the anguish I was going through trying to figure out what happened between Hannah and me, and I didn’t fall into depression. I smoked my pipe and read on, surprised at some of the things I had written, but not longing to return. I had a great dinner. I improvised a chicken curry which was a little too sweet, but wonderful. I feel much better about my teaching. I will admit that I noticed in one student’s journal (I think Agnieszka A’s) that English is one of her favorite subjects. She does seem rather interested during class. I appreciate that — it makes my life so much easier.

All these things combine, and I am so happy to be here. I feel complete, as if I am doing something useful. I have grown so much in the past year, and it is paying its dividends now. I am at peace with the past. I am happy with my present. I am optimistic about my future. The thread of my life seems to be a wonderfully curved line that makes a beautiful pattern. It’s not straight, by any stretch of the imagination, but I no longer feel that I must take both ends (the past and the future) and try to straighten it out so that my present seems a little more comfortable.

Bar Adventures

Last night I was in Nowy Targ (w Nowym Targu) for a blues concert at Dudek, the club that Charles always goes to. The music was outstanding — a guitar, bass, and drums, and they all knew what they were doing. It was great. I danced like a maniac. I didn’t realize how much of a catharsis dancing until you’re drenched in sweat could be. The feeling and emotion in the music was contagious: They were having a blast playing and it made it impossible for me not to have a blast dancing. Things got rather intense at the end, and we were almost moshing. I think it could have gotten “out of control” in that sense if things continued.

I sat in on a couple of numbers and played harmonica, but I don’t think I played well at all. I’m a little ashamed of it, in fact. I couldn’t hear myself at all, and I was just playing by feel. Such is life, I guess. We all have to make asses of ourselves on occasion.

The highlight of the evening came when the bouncer came up to me and said, “Don’t look on [sic] my girl again or I’ll kick your ass. Do you understand?” I had noticed “his” girl from the moment she walked in the room — she was really attractive with a lovely body and something about her that reminded me of Krissy Cooper (I’ve always thought she was elegantly beautiful.). I don’t know if she noticed me glancing up at her every now and then and told “her” boy to say something or whether he was just completely insecure about his relationship and felt the need to threaten everything that in his eyes threatens his relationship. Whatever the case, it was a little surprising and disturbing. I was tempted to correct his English: “Okay, well first of all, it’s ‘Don’t look at,’ not ‘Don’t look on.’ You can never use ‘look on’ as a transitive verb.” I didn’t think it was wise to antagonize the Neanderthal.

It’s moments like that that I always wish I was the master of some martial art. Visions of glory dance in my head as I see myself refusing to back down: “Look, I just happened to notice that she’s a very attractive woman. I’m not going to make a move on her. But don’t tell me to do this or not to do that.” He loses control and makes a move — tries to hit me. I swat his fist away like it’s an insect. “Come on now, just let it alone. I don’t want any trouble.” He, being the asshole he is, makes another move, though, and before he realizes it, I’ve got him in some incredibly painful and completely disabling position . . . We wimps have such vivid daydreams.

Ultimate Concerns

I also got a letter from C. B had showed her an early draft (the second draft) of “To Be Anointed” and she asked, “[Do] you still feel that way? Very thought provoking. I do like the way you think, the way you write. Very very much.” I reread it and I had forgotten about the final stanza. I like it, but I’m not sure about the rest of the poem. It reflects my previous flirtations with theism, and so now I think the only thing “Tugging / and pushing” was myself. I wonder how much of that was written out of an attempt to believe, an attempt to hear the things I wanted to hear myself say. We’re so often saying what we think others want to hear; how often do we do that with ourselves?

Do I still feel that way? I don’t think so. I think what I just wrote pretty much answers that question. I think theism is a dead end. I wonder what she meant by “thought provoking?” How exactly is it thought provoking? It assumes a certain theistic stance which I no longer hold, and I think if I read it not knowing who wrote it, I would find it a bit silly.

She wrote about a question on a test for her world religion class: “What aspect of your religion would you go-to-the-mat for, die for, stand up for? Why?” After defining religion, she said that she answered, “the respect Hinduism accords to believe. I told him I was brought up in a Hindu country and it teaches its adherents to live and let live. It’s a lesson I’m still learning and I hope some day to perfect. This [is] in response to your writing about evangelism.” I can’t say that there’s much of anything I would die for. I would give my life for certain people, I think, but I’m not sure there’s anything I believe so strongly that I would die for it. But what if someone held a gun to my head and say, “Profess a belief in Christ or I’ll kill you?” That’s such a silly hypothesis that I won’t even deal with it.

She talked of two theologian’s definition of religion. The first was Paul Tillich’s (I just read one of his essays a couple of weeks ago). He defined religion as ultimate concern. My text on the philosophy of religion says,

Religious faith, for Tillich, grows out of those experiences with which we invest ultimate value and to which we give our ultimate allegiance. Behind Tillich’s assertion that religious faith is ultimate concern lie two assumptions. The first assumption is that ultimate concern is common to all religions. . . . The second assumption is that no one is without some kind of faith in the sense of an ultimate concern.’

I am rather uneasy with that definition of religion. At the same time, it does encompass things like materialism which takes on a certain religious fanaticism with some people. I guess I’m uneasy with it because it implies that, despite my claims to the contrary, I am a religious person. It opens a dangerous door, for that means that all people are religious. It reminds me of D’s claim that all people have to believe in something. Am I falling into the other ditch? Some people are so theistic that it’s sickening; am I growing so anti-theistic that it’s sickening?

In that case, my ultimate concern – my religion, so to speak – must be people. I would be defined as a “secular humanist” in that my primary concern has to do with people’s lives on earth, right now. It shows its fruit in the joy I have in teaching, for I believe in some way I am indeed making a difference. Tillich holds that “faith provides unity and focus to the human personality” (Stewart 152) and this is a good description of how I feel about teaching. It gives me a focus, and it provides some hope for me. “An ecstatic experience is one that leads beyond the immediacy of the moment or, to use a parallel term, an experience that transcends the selfish tendencies of our nature” (Stewart 153). I know that sometimes while teaching I’ve had moments that seem to transcend the moment. Usually it has come at those moments when someone finally catches hold of the principle I’m trying to teach him/her and it sets their whole face aglow.

I look forward to teaching back in the States. I really enjoy what I’m doing here, but I’m working with these kids on such an elementary level that it can be a little empty at times. Of course there’s not much which is deeper than language, but I’m just teaching the very basics of English. I want to encourage students to think, to analyze and question, and teaching English to liceum kids doesn’t provide this. Of course I keep trying to convince myself that I’m not here for myself, but for the kids. Maybe I’m only fooling myself.

Long Trip Home

It has been a very long journey to this moment: I am finally home, and I finally have my computer. I am no longer cut off from the technology that I became so dependent on in the past. Perhaps it was a good thing that I was without it for so long, but I am certainly not going to give it up just to make this good thing better.

The trip from Sopot to Lipnica was hellish. Saturday morning I left with Julie N. and Grace on an 8:50 train to Warszawa to pick up my computer. I got to Warszawa around one and decided it would be best to get a little more money, so I headed to the poczta in Centralna and waited in line for half an hour for my money. Then I went to pick up a ticket to Kraków, waiting in line for another half hour. “Prosze jeden bilet do Kraków, druga klasa, na ‘Express’ pociag,” I said. “Nie ma druga klasa,” said the lady behind the glass. “Pierwrza bedzie dobra,” I said. After a moment, she said it: “Nie ma.”

“Crap!” I yelled so loud that I’m sure the whole station heard me. I stormed out of the station and the tension continued to build. I asked a taxi driver how much it would cost to get to Bukowinska. The answer: about thirty zloty. I knew that Julie was supposed to be at the Marriot for a while, so I headed over there and we chatted, allowing me time to calm down. She loaned me 50 zl as a precaution and off I went. I bought a tram ticket, road out to Bukowinska and picked up my computer. Then I went back to Centralna to try to decide what to do. I decided to go to Zabrze and stay with Mike D. I knew it would take a little bit more money, but not as much as getting a hotel room in Warszawa. First I went to Katowice. The train was thirty minutes late, leaving at 8:10, so I ended up waiting about two hours for that train. The actual trip took three hours, then I hopped another train for the final half-hour to Zabrze. I found Druker’s place; I knocked on the door; no one answered. I finally got a hotel room for 23 zl and just crashed. Then today I took the 10:53 to Kraków and from there the 1:00 bus to Chyzne. Mike M. was on it, so we chatted for most of the way. Just outside of Spytkowice we ran into traffic problems – an auto accident due to all the heavy vacation traffic. We spent an hour there, then I had about a forty-minute wait in Jabłonka for the bus to Lipnica. All told, it took me ten and a half hours to get to Sopot and thirty-two and a half to get back. That’s forty-three hours of traveling.