I’ve been promising to write about my new school and what I actually
do here, so I figured it was time to talk about my position as an English
Teaching Assistant. The role of teaching assistant really does vary from school
to school, for example they expected something entirely different from me at my
first school (G2, where, as I have mentioned before, the students were at a
very low level of English) than they do at my current school (H18, where the
students are at a much higher English level).
(typical questions that I get asked)
At G2 I started out observing classes, from English classes with two different teachers,
to classes where they were discussing current events (such as the train
strikes in Hamburg) in German, to classes of international students learning both English and German.
Once I started helping out I did everything from
giving a presentation on how to use Power Point in English, to making a quiz about
global warming and the English vocabulary needed for that subject, to
introducing them to the concept of American Thanksgiving via “A Charlie Brown
Thanksgiving” and clips from “Friends” (the episode where Joey eats an entire
turkey by himself was met with much amusement). I got to have fun and play
Scrabble and Rory’s Story Cubes with them, and then sometimes had to do more
boring work like creating a template for a maintenance contract. Overall one of
the teachers made sure to take advantage of my presence and gave me the
opportunity to “team-teach” and help out as much as possible, while my other teacher
didn't quite have the same idea, so with her I mostly observed and then occasionally
she would throw me into a class or a project with no warning whatsoever.
Comparatively speaking at my new school I have been able to
help out a lot more. While I do still observe classes, it is more out of
necessity since the students are required to give a lot of presentations. These
presentations are still interesting for me though, since they are mostly tourism/travel students giving presentations on either towns and cities in Germany or cities
worldwide, and in return I have been giving a presentation about Boston (sorry
Pennsylvania people, maybe someday I’ll give a presentation on Lancaster, but
for the time being I haven’t been given the time to discuss the whole “Amish” subject).
Aside from that I have mostly been helping with grammar
related things, since as I said these students have a much higher level of
English, and that is truly what they need help with. I have given a presentation
on word order in sentences (subject/place/time, etc. Funny story: my voice gave
out halfway through said presentation so a good chunk of it was just me
croaking at the class) and a presentation on prepositions (wanted desperately
to show them the School House Rock video about prepositions, but decided that
if I did so they would probably think that all Americans are on drugs).
I also had to create a handout about when to use the word “the”
(kept making puns about “The” Handout…yup, still funny). And I am currently
helping some of my tourism students with correcting their homework and business
complaint or apology letters (much like what I did as a tutor at Suffolk),
checking their grammar, spelling, etc.
There are cons to my job, even at my fancy new school. I
definitely feel that I’m not given the chance to help out as much as I would
like to. This comes partially from the fact that it seems as though a few of the
teachers don’t believe that I can teach/help out because I’m so young/haven’t
had a million years of teacher training like German teachers have, and
partially from the fact that since I work at a vocational/business school their
schedule is often set in stone, and they don’t always have the time to deviate
from the plan to do “fun” English things. Most of the time I am just there as
an available resource or “living dictionary” if you will. This is a constant
source of frustration for me, since there is nothing I dislike more than
sitting around doing nothing, which is often what I end up doing in class. As an
overachieving workaholic I would love to be active in every single class, but
that’s just not how this works and I’ve had to make peace with that.
But aside from that, my new school is definitely one big
pro. I love it when I feel like I am actually helping (or getting through) to
the students, I love seeing them get excited to see me in class, and I love that
I get to learn about a subject that I am interested in as well. My new teachers
are all pretty cool, I only have about 14 full weeks of teaching left (!), and also as of Saturday I am on vacation for three weeks and am going to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, so life is good.
(More typical questions. They really do think that we Americans are all fat, know tons of movie stars, and eat nothing but fast food)
