The ABC's of the Polish School System

Here’s a picture of my school!

Today I’d like to highlight the top ten differences I've observed between American and Polish schools (in no special order):

1) The bells – In American schools, the bell determines when class begins. If you arrive to class after the bell, you are tardy. I confused my students here the first week of school because I would walk to my classroom and set up before the bell. Then the bell would ring and I would find myself in an empty classroom – no students! Now I know the drill and follow the other teachers’ leads. I sit in the teachers’ lounge during passing periods (5 or 10 minutes) and drink a cup of tea or eat a small sandwich. When the bell rings (the bell that signals the “beginning of class”), I continue to sip tea for approximately 2 minutes in a calm, relaxed manner. Then I watch as teachers, suddenly realizing that the bell rang and that they must teach, begin to hurriedly rush about the room collecting keys for classrooms, attendance books, and materials (and I follow suit). Then I locate my students in the hallway, open the door to our classroom, and begin class (approximately 4 minutes after the bell rings). I have issues with the loss of instruction time (it’s only a 45-minute period!), but I can’t fight the system!

2) No electives or extracurricular activities – Could I have survived middle school and high school without art, photography, guitar, band, and other miscellaneous electives? I don’t know! The students here are enrolled in at least two foreign languages (German and English and sometimes also French) so it’s a built-in, pre-determined “elective curriculum.” There are no art, music, drama, shop, etc. electives here. I’ve talked about not having extracurriculars before. We had our after school cookie decorating party this week and about 20 students participated – a great success! I loved interacting with the students in a more informal setting. The informality of the event did confuse a couple of the students. Robert, pictured below with his cookie masterpieces including a Christmas tree decorated with the Italian flag, was a little confused by the informality. We were talking about Christmas (we had both decorated our trees over the weekend), and I asked him a question about tree traditions in Poland. His reply: “I must presentate about this in class?” “No, Robert, you don’t have to give a presentation about this in class. I’m only curious about Christmas traditions in Poland!”

3) Technology – Of the 35 classrooms in the school, only two have computers - the computer lab (with 12 computers) and one math classroom with 4 computers. None of the classrooms have overhead projectors. Only 4 of the classrooms have TVs. I have my laptop, but I cannot get Internet access at school. Teachers frequently play cassettes - not CDs - in their classrooms. Sometimes I love the lack of technology; sometimes it would help if I could show the students images online or create one overhead projector outline instead of writing on the board or printing dozens of handouts for the students.

4) Registers – Registers are attendance/grade books for every homeroom in the school. Students are grouped by grade into homerooms with approximately 23-26 students. Instead of every teacher having his or her own attendance and grade book, every homeroom has one book for all of the teachers who teach that class. After every class, I have to write what I did in class, note how many students were absent, and sign the book. I also record all of my students’ grades in the book. This ritual was stressful at the beginning of the year, but now it’s part of the routine (although sometimes other teachers hog the books and that’s a little frustrating because you get in trouble if you don’t promptly mark the books).

5) Classmates – Again, students are grouped into homerooms of 23-26 students, and students attend all of their classes (science, math, gym, English, Polish, German, etc.) with only the students in their homeroom. For example, there are three 7^th grade classes – called “1ag,” “1bg,” and “1cg” (each with 23-26 students), but students from 1ag never have class with students from 1bg or 1cg. I’m pleasantly surprised how well this system works. I know I loved middle school and high school because you saw different people in all of your classes. Overall, I’m impressed by how well the students in homerooms work together, how well they know each other, and how well they take care of each other.

6) Internal substitution – Anyone who asked me about the biggest and most challenging adjustment this fall has heard me talk about internal substitution! In Polish schools, if a teacher is ill, absent, or chaperoning a field trip, another teacher at the school serves as the substitute. I joked at the beginning of the year that I was the school’s “#1 substitute.” Substitution is difficult for a couple reasons. 1) Substitution is typically very last minute. Sometimes one of the school directors will dash into the teachers’ room and say “Miss Sarah, can you substitute for this class in 5 minutes?” 2) Substitution typically involves very big classes. I’m lucky that my conversation classes are never more than 17 students. However, when I substitute, I typically have between 25 and 35 students. It’s not that it’s super difficult to manage 25-35 students; it’s that it’s super difficult when you only have 5 minutes notice before substituting. (Once they tried to give me 60 students for 2 hours, but I asked the director to split the class and she said that they made a crazy mistake by assigning me 60 students. I’m glad I asked!) What do you do when you substitute? I asked this question very early on and was told that it’s a great opportunity to give the students an extra English conversation lesson (obviously, if I’m subbing for a Polish class, I can’t teach them Polish!). Typically, I try to have a good lesson plan for substitution. I now create substitution lesson plans over the weekend and can quickly pull them out when an emergency substitution arises. I’m now very relaxed about substitution (my “chilled” attitude about last minute substitution crises would amaze anyone who knows me and my love of planning and preparation), but it caused a lot of stress the first couple months.

7) School schedule – I was amazed at the beginning of the year at the number of school-aged children I saw wandering the streets of Cieszyn between the hours of 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. on school days. Why aren’t they in school? I quickly learned that there is no standard school day in Cieszyn. Students start and end their days at different times depending on the day. For example, a student might go to school at 8 a.m. on Mondays, but 9:45 on Wednesdays. On Tuesdays, she or he might go home at 2:30, but at 1 p.m. on Thursdays. Rarely will a student stay at school for a straight 6 hours. (I’m remembering my high school days – 7:30 a.m. until 3:15 p.m. – almost 8 hours – and that didn’t include extracurriculars before and after school!)

8) Locked classrooms – Teachers here “travel” from classroom to classroom. I teach in 9 different classrooms (#1, #3, #10, #13, #16, #20, #22, #31, #32 – classroom #10 is pictured above). The classrooms are also always locked. In the teachers’ room, we have a box of keys for all the classrooms. After the bell rings, you have to attempt to locate the key for your classroom. Sometimes you’re successful and you open your classroom door, the students sit down, and you begin your class. However, if you can’t locate the key, the search begins. Typically if you can track down Andrzej (our school’s “keeper of the keys”), you can get the spare key from him. However, if Andrzej is missing in action, or if he lent his spare key to a teacher who then failed to return it to him, you are literally locked out of your classroom and then have the challenge of finding 1) an unoccupied classroom (and it’s a very crowded school) 2) with a key so you can open it 3) with 15 antsy students typically trailing behind you.

9) Discipline – There are no discipline policies at school for tardiness or behavior issues. Well, the policy is that you report the issue to the student’s homeroom teacher. I’m happy to report that the discipline issues are, overall, mild. The students are good-natured and especially kind to their classmates and overall very respectful to their peers and teachers (my school sometimes feels like a big, loud family – teachers are very close and students are very close). However, I’ve talked to a couple teachers at school who are also frustrated by the lack of disciplinary procedures and the fact that the individual teacher has no control over classroom discipline issues. I dislike the lack of procedures because it’s a waste of classroom instruction time if teachers have to devote extra time to discipline issues because there’s not a standard procedure for how to respond to typical problems. Tardiness is also acceptable here, and that’s difficult for me as a teacher! If students arrive to class anywhere from 4 to 8 minutes after the bell rings, you waste valuable instruction time or have to repeat instructions that students wouldn’t have missed had they arrived on time! My students know that I do not like tardiness (well, hilariously, because of the bell schedule, you are “tardy” to my class if you arrive more than 4 minutes after the bell rings) and are typically very good about arriving on time. I appreciate their willingness to adjust to my “cultural norms” in this instance!

10) Chit-Chat – Students are also very talkative in class. They constantly chit-chat. They’ve improved over the semester, but it’s also a basic cultural difference. I feel that students should listen to each other when they talk because it’s 1) respectful and 2) valuable for them to hear each other speak English because it’s exposure to the language and they learn from each other’s mistakes. However, I’ve learned from students and other teachers that it’s rare to ask for students to sit and listen quietly in class (another challenge of teaching in a new culture – sometimes it’s difficult to know if a behavior is “typical” or if students are acting out because I’m the “native speaker” with no background knowledge of the Polish school system). Typically students talk to the teacher one at a time and during that time the rest of the class is allowed to talk and chit-chat. My students and I have found a “happy medium” solution to the chit-chat dilemma. They’ve drastically improved their listening skills (sometimes extrinsically motivated by a “listening grade” I include in their assignments) and slightly lowered the intensity and frequency of their chit-chat, and I’ve adjusted to the (in my opinion) slight chaos of always hearing chit-chat when I’m talking and other students are talking. I still savor quiet moments when only one person is talking and everyone is listening! Perhaps these last two differences (#9 and #10) are the most surprising to me. I anticipated that Poland would have quite strict schools, and I’m frequently surprised by the intensity of the chit-chat (10xs more than in any American classroom) and the lack of standard school discipline policies.

(I submitted my semester grades (called “marks”) this week, and I promise to post about the Polish grading system soon! It’s also very interesting and was not included here because the topic deserves its own post!)

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

Here’s my new motto: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” In my "perfect" blog entry, I would write a maximum of 250 carefully selected words and reflect on only one theme. You'll notice that this entry doesn't follow either rule. I know I’ll refine my “blogging skills” throughout this year, but I’m not letting the “perfect be the enemy of the good." Here’s a scattering of stories from my past week:

Realization of the week:

All female Polish names end in “a”. I don’t know why, but this is fascinating to me! I have 87 female students, and all of their names end in “a”. Kamila, Kasia, Basia, Barbara, Ada, Aga, Madga, Ania, Anna, Justyna, Renata, Ala, Danuta, Karolina...Perhaps students prefer calling me “Miss Sarah” because (well, if you spell it “Sara”) it fits into their understanding of female names!

Gesture language:

My dad and sister Claire are visiting this week before we travel to London for Christmas with my mom and youngest sister Kate! I’m delighted to have them visit and have the opportunity to show them around my home for the year. Next weekend, we’re traveling to Krakow and staying at a fantastic hostel I discovered this fall. The hostel website’s FAQ section includes the question “what languages do the staff speak?” The answer: “Polish, English, and Gesture Language.” I too am a fluent speaker of “Gesture Language.” This week, I bought two pairs of pants. Gesture language was very helpful because I needed assistance from salespeople in both stores. However, I have to tell a great story about buying my dress pants. Colleen (my fellow American teacher in Cieszyn and next door neighbor) kindly accompanied me on my mission (I hate buying pants in America too). At one store, I found a pair that fit perfectly, and Colleen offered to hold them because I wanted to look at a couple skirts. A salesperson approached Colleen and asked her a couple questions she didn't understand (she was probably asking if we wanted the pants held at the register or if she could return them to the rack if we didn’t want them). Not wanting to part with the pants, Colleen picked a verb we knew and in a moment of panic and brilliance said “kocham to” (translation: I love it [i.e., the pants]). The salesperson laughed and laughed but let Colleen keep the pants! I like to think that my inability to communicate and the very simplistic language I use when I do (miraculously!) know context-appropriate Polish words bring great joy to other people’s lives. I have wonderful stories to tell about my students and their exploration of the English language, and people in the community and at my school have great stories to tell about me and my attempts to master Polish!

Clogged drains:

I had a dinner celebration on Wednesday with two Polish friends – Bozena and Rafał - who moved into a new apartment this week. We were talking about “home improvement,” and Bozena told us a story about the shower in their old apartment. She opened the story by saying that the drain was very clogged – but she quickly clarified by saying that it was clogged “not with her hair” but “someone else’s hair.” It’s reassuring to know that women around the world blame clogged drains on other people’s hair.

Christmas decorations:

Colleen and I decorated our Christmas tree this week. Living in an apartment inhabited by American teachers for the past 10 years is a blessing when you discover that someone years ago bought a 3-foot fake Christmas tree and left it for future Americans to enjoy! We created a garland of mini snowflakes to hang on the tree and also made an angel for the top out of a paper plate (a Czech paper plate, I should say, because they do not sell paper plates in Poland; see picture above)! We wrote 15 greetings for the angel to hold – one for every day before Christmas. Every day she holds a different Christmas greeting in a different language. The Christmas greetings are written in 15 of the languages we read on food labels every day – including Bulgarian, Hungarian, Russian, Czech, and Latvian. Here’s a picture of the angel with the Polish greeting for Christmas – “Wesołych Świąt!” Interestingly, “Wesołych Świąt!” is also the greeting you say to wish someone a happy Easter! ("Isn't this confusing?" I asked one of my students. "No," he said. "If it's December, the person is saying 'Merry Christmas' and if it's spring the person is saying 'Happy Easter.'")

A haircut:

I went to get my hair cut last week (and dragged Colleen along too)! My first haircut in Poland. Cost: $5 (14 PLN or złotych). Looking in the Lonely Planet Polish phrase book and discovering that one of the five essential “hairdressing phrases” they list is “I should never have come here!” (“Załuję ze tu przyszłam!”): Priceless. Here’s a picture of Colleen and me after our haircuts. Luckily we didn't need to say "Załuję ze tu przyszłam!”

Cookie party:

Colleen and I are hosting a Christmas party after school on Monday. This weekend we baked 15 dozen sugar cookies for the students to decorate and we’re also planning to sing carols. When I announced the party in my classes last week, the students had a couple reactions. My youngest students were a little confused. Extracurricular activities don’t exist in Polish schools. There are no sport teams, musical groups, or clubs that meet before or after school. Students arrive for their first lesson and leave immediately after their last. A couple students asked me if they would receive a grade at the party (ummm...no). Others thought all my classes were canceled for next week and that’s why we were meeting after school for a make-up class (ummm...no). Luckily, after a little clarification, the students understood. I asked them to put their names on a sign up sheet so we would know how many cookies to bake. Two 8^th grade girls ran up to me on Thursday and told me excitedly “Miss Sarah, we signed up for the party, and we put exclamation!” A couple students had written question marks next to their names on the sign up sheet because they didn’t know yet if they could stay after school on Monday. My two girls, Agata and Marta, put “exclamation” (exclamation points) after their names.

"Chala!"

Today, I’d like to share a couple stories from my everyday life.

Racing the lights:

I race with a lot of lights here. My commute to school is between 3 and 8 minutes, depending on when I arrive at the crosswalk in front of my apartment. You know that when 17-year-old “cool kid” boys wait for the “walk signal” at the crosswalk that it’s a serious “no-no” to cross against the light. I rarely run to make the light, but I’ve seen people of all ages - children, parents with strollers (sometimes I fear for the lives of their babies), and older people with walkers - run from half a block away to cross the street when the little red man turns green. Otherwise, you’re trapped on this side of the street for 5 more minutes.

I also race the hallway lights in my apartment building. To save electricity, the building is always dark unless you turn the lights on when you enter. Then you have 30 seconds to run up the windy staircase to your apartment before the building is pitch black again. You’re in trouble if the lights are already on when you open the front door to the building. Even if you hit the switch again, the light timer doesn’t reset and you don’t get 1 minute instead of 30 seconds if you hit the switch twice (I’ve tried). Sometimes I stand at the entrance and wait for the lights to go out so I can press the switch again for a full 30 seconds and run!

I also love when visitors leave my apartment because, of course, you also have to turn the lights on before you go down the staircase. However, all of the 5 switches outside of my apartment are labeled as lights, but 4 of them are doorbells for different apartments including my own and only one is for the lights! I probably need to send an apology letter to my neighbors for the number of times people have rung their doorbells instead of turning on the lights.

Silesian dialect:

Numerous people living in southern Poland on the Polish-Czech border speak the distinctive Polish Cieszyn Silesian dialect. Here on the border, the Polish language is strongly influenced by Czech and German. People here rarely say “tak” for “yes;” they say “no” (pronounced exactly like “no” in English but with a very short vowel). Especially with my younger students, I have to pay close attention to their facial expressions and body language when they say “no.” Sometimes they respond in Polish (where “no” = “yes”) and sometimes they respond in English (where “no” = “no”).

The dialect is especially challenging when I’m trying to say words I haven’t learned in my Polish lessons but that I’ve read somewhere. For example, I wanted to ask for challah at the bakery down the street. I looked up the word “challah” in my Polish-English dictionary and page 31 said the word for “challah” in Polish is “chala” (pronounced “how-ah”). But when I asked for “chala” at the bakery, they laughed and laughed! I did eventually leave with the correct bread, but I was bewildered by their confusion. When I told one of my Polish teachers what I had said, she told me that “chala” in our dialect translates to “that’s rubbish!” In Silesia, if you would like challah, you must ask for “chalka” (pronounced “how-kah”). Ah, the difference of a single letter! My students loved hearing this story, and the women at the bakery still smile when I ask for “chalka.”

Grocery shopping:

I am blessed to have Colleen, my fellow ELCA missionary, to eat dinner with every night. Needless to say, our first trips to the grocery store at the beginning of the year were overwhelming. Sometimes, when we’re tired and running to the store to pick up something quick for dinner, Colleen jokes that “we can’t buy that, there aren’t any pictures!” We’ve fallen in love with food labels that have pictures of the mystery food inside the jar, or pictures that show us how to make a sauce. In Cieszyn, English is not the 2^nd language, nor the 3^rd, nor the 4^th. After Polish, people speak Czech, German, and Russian. Sometimes when I tell someone I do not speak Polish, they’ll at least try Czech or German before realizing I am not fluent in any of the four languages commonly heard on the streets of Cieszyn. Food labels at the grocery store prove how rare English is here. The majority of food labels do not have English but typically include translations into the following languages (other than Polish): Czech, German, Russian, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian. When they include more, they move on to Scandinavian languages: Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. Cooking is a great, practical way to learn Polish!

It’s also fascinating to discover what foods you cannot buy here. You can’t buy chocolate chips, brown sugar, vanilla, peanut butter, or ranch dressing. You can’t buy turkey, so for Thanksgiving on Thursday we ate chicken. Sweet potatoes are very rare, and pumpkins for carving are too. For Halloween, we carved red peppers instead.

School:

Of course, I’ll devote dozens of blog entries to my students and my experiences teaching them, but today I’ll share with you a couple of phrases I hear at school.

“Good morning!” – In Polish, “dzien dobry” (it’s difficult to describe how this phrase is pronounced, but it’s close to “gin dough-bree”) is a greeting appropriate in the morning, afternoon, and early evening (late at night they switch to “dobry wieczor”). I love when students greet me when they see me in the hallways at school or out and about in Cieszyn. However, they have a difficult time remembering that “good morning” is not an “all day” greeting like “dzien dobry.” Students frequently say “good morning” to me at 3 or 4 p.m., and sometimes I say “good morning” back and then laugh at myself when I realize my mistake. I’ve talked with all of my students about greetings, and most of them now remember to say “good afternoon,” but it never fails that at least once a day someone will say “good morning” to me only a couple hours before dinner.

“Is it a test?” – There’s no English conversation curriculum or textbook at my school; teachers are responsible for designing their own units and lesson plans. Especially with my youngest students, sometimes calling it an “English conversation” class is a bit of an overstatement because of their limited knowledge of English. However, I’ve found that students retain more knowledge from week to week and also participate more frequently in my class if I provide them with handouts that, for example, list new vocabulary for the day or list instructions they might have difficulty understanding if they only hear them. I give my students handouts probably every other week. However, there’s a practice in Polish schools where teachers are allowed to give “pop quizzes” on their last three lessons. These quizzes are administered, without warning (hence the “pop”), at the beginning of class. The quiz is sometimes written, sometimes oral. Students, especially 7^th and 8^th graders, are terrified of pop quizzes. Every day, when I pass out handouts to my students, someone anxiously asks me “is this a test?” and I have to reassure them that it isn’t.

Oral pop quizzes typically consist of three questions. At the beginning of every lesson, I write the objectives for our class on the board. Typically I have two, maybe three, objectives. When I have three objectives, students anxiously ask me “is this a test?” because they are afraid that it’s an oral exam. Poor kids. I terrify them without trying. I never give them tests, pop or planned! There’s no English conversation curriculum, but I’m not allowed to give exams or quizzes, and that’s okay with me! I always try to reassure the students. Maybe next semester they’ll accept handouts without looks of terror on their faces.

“Miss Sarah, what must we do?” – At the beginning of the year, I asked the students to call me by my last name, but it’s very difficult for them (especially the younger students) to pronounce. However “Sara” (without the “h” at the end and pronounced a little differently - “S-ahh-r-ahh” with a rolled “r” too) is a popular name in Poland. A very intelligent 11-year-old named Tomasz in one of my classes asks me this question – “Miss Sarah, what must we do?” – at least once every lesson, usually after I’ve very, very carefully described a task, assignment, or activity. Tomasz typically understands what to do, but the 11 and 12-year-olds I teach need a lot of encouragement, reinforcement, and repetition. They are very eager to learn, and I am always trying to create better and better lessons for them. I can’t help but love the simplicity and truth of Tomek’s question. In a new country, new culture, and new job, I too am always asking, “what must I do?”

Cieszyn, Poland

Here is how Cieszyn, Poland - according to legend - received its name. In 810, three brothers, after traveling separately for decades, reunited at a spring in an unnamed territory. Out of great joy over their reunion, they established a town and named it Cieszyn, from the Polish phrase “cieszym sie” or “I’m happy.” Today I’m happy to begin telling stories of my year of service and accompaniment teaching English at a Lutheran junior high school and high school in Cieszyn. Today with great joy, and great happiness, I establish this blog.