"Simon Says FART!!!!!"

How amazing is this: I can officially say, that I, Audrey Bashore, have TEACHING EXPERIENCE in GERMANY!!

Forgive the caps. This entry is going to be positively LITTERED with them. It's just my complete and utter happiness/excitement/pumped-up-ness exploding out of my fingers and into my blog. [Ew. That sounds kind of gross.]

So. The story starts like this.

Last week I met with a woman who runs a music school for kids. I'm going to end up working with her and her students starting in February (amazing) and she also put me in touch with a bunch of other educators in the area (amazing), as well as an american student here who sings in one of the opera companies in hamburg (also amazing). One of the women she put me in touch with runs a school called Sunny Side Up English for kids. It's a little outside of town, but the woman who runs it (Addie) returned my calls and we managed to set something up for this past Wednesday.

So I got started at a relatively early hour - I mean, when you're kind of a homeless american english teacher looking for work and apartments, it's easy to schedule your appointments for later in the day rather than earlier, so getting up at 8:30 to be in Wandsbek-Gartenstadt by 10:30 did kind of feel like the crack of dawn. Unfortunately for me, I didn't know that the aforementioned Wandsbek-Gartenstadt requires like an HOUR long commute, so I was running a touch behind and getting a liiiiittle nervous about being so late (germans are amazing people, but they are sticklers for punctuality). So after my subway and bus adventure (yes, it takes two modes of transportation to get to W-G), I was a good 15 minutes late. I found the building, walked up to the second floor, knocked and found the door unlocked, walked inside, and was greeted by the MOST adorable pug. I used to think that pugs looked kiiiind of like alien dogs (helped, no doubt, by the fact that in the classic film Men In Black, the pug in the movie, is, in fact, an alien) but this one was adorable. She suffers from asthma. Which explained the wheezy/excited noises she was making upon my arrival. And I just thought she REALLY liked me. So much, in fact, that she was rendered short of breath. But no. It's just her medical condition.

Right. So Addie and I sat down and had a nice long chat - talked about her school, where she started when she first came to Hamburg, her family, etc. She was great. We got along right off the bat. After the end of an hour or so, she paused in the middle of our conversation, leaned in and, after lowering her voice, said, "So I know this is super unprofessional, but I can't teach my class tomorrow...would you be able to fill in for me?" After picking my jaw up from the floor and making sure I'd be able to teach the class ("all you really need to do is play games and speak english and make sure the children don't kill each other"), I commited. I was ready to start lesson planning for my VERY FIRST CLASS IN GERMANY. AMAZING!

The class was scheduled for 45 minutes. I had three students (in these private language schools the classes are usually pretty small) between the ages of 8 and 10, who had all been raised bilingually. I put together a loose lesson plan, and then got to the school a half an hour early to get materials together and put stuff up on the board. The kids arrived right on time (those germans!) and we got right down to business. Because they didn't know me, and I didn't know them, I thought we'd start with an ice breaker of sorts. (Tried and true TEFL method right there.) I had written a couple of things up on the board (brothers/sisters, sports, instruments, birthday, what you ate for lunch, etc), and went through each category and introduced myself, and then asked the kids to pick three categories to talk about. It worked like a CHARM. They were super bubbly and energetic and in to it.

After introductions, we transitioned nicely into an absolutely ROUSING game of Simon Says. It did get sliiiightly out of hand (so much for thinking that because it was my first time teaching the group they'd hang on my every word and follow all my directions. ha.) but it did warrant some pretty good prompts: "SIMON SAYS FART!!! FAAAAART!!! Ahahahahaha!!" "Simon Says KILL STEFFEN!!! KILLLLL HIMMMMM!!!" We went through all the body parts during Simon Says, and then drew a big body up on the board and went through and labelled all the different parts. Although the kids have been raised bilingually, their reading and writing are way behind. So we got some pretty interesting results (stomag, confusing fingers and toes, the shoulder and the elbow, etc). But after going through and labelling the entire body, we had a racing spelling quiz. They got SUPER into it. And before I knew it, time was up. And I HAD A BLAST. The kids were great, they had tons of energy, were super open, listened (for the most part) and enjoyed themselves. I considered it a RESOUNDING success. As soon as I get my work visa figured out and a more definite schedule (an apartment would be nice too) I'll be working for them on a more frequent basis. It was great. SO EXCITING.

After class was over I actually ended up walking back to the bus stop with one of my students and her family. We were talking about school and family other random 8-year-old topics when she asked me where I lived in Hamburg. I explained that I'm from the States and don't have a home here, but that I'm looking for an apartment, and staying in a hotel in the meantime. She was shocked. "You don't have a home here???" I explained again that I didn't, and she proposed the following solution: "Come stay with us! Live with us until you find something!" I nearly died it was so cute. And if that's not proof of my mad teaching skillz, I don't know what is :)

I'm hopefully going to start teaching at another institute in Altona - working mostly with higher level conversation classes. Other than that, I'm about to start my training as a liscensed 'Kindermusik' instructor, and as soon as I'm done with that I'll start working at another school for kids. Man. I kind of can't believe that this is all working out. That I just kind of decided that I wanted to get trained (and did), wanted to come back to Germany (and did), wanted to move to Hamburg (and did), wanted to get jobs (and did), and wanted to get an apartment (working on it). I'll be walking down the street and burst out into spontaneous laughter when it hits me how amazing this all is. I guess that's why they call it Deutschland-Land of Sausages and Dreams, right??

LOVE,
aud


pictured: the Binnenalster (downtown area).
[photo credit: google]