My First Lasts

I’m starting to experience my first “lasts.” Last week I started teaching my last semester here. It’s my last school dance this weekend. It was my last visit to the visa office in Bielsko last Friday (well, keep your fingers crossed). The “lasts” are starting.

My last day in Poland is Wednesday, June 1. I’m ending the school year early to fly home to attend my sisters’ high school/college graduations, milestones that I wouldn’t miss for the world. (Thanks to my school directors for understanding how important it was to me to get to attend these events and letting me finish the school year early. And thanks to all the teachers who are covering my classes during the crazy last days of school when teenagers have “it’s-almost-summer-vacation-why-should-we-have-to-learn-anything” syndrome.)

This morning I finished writing my master semester calendar and the winter/spring syllabi for all of my classes. And, wow, June 1 is approaching fast.

If you know me well, you know that I’m a “research reader.” I like to read to prepare myself for change, and on the plane back to Cieszyn from Christmas I started my “re-entry” reading.

I loved Craig Storti’s works on living abroad (I read them before arriving in August 2009) and so I bought his book about re-entry – “The Art of Coming Home” – over Christmas break.

Here’s his advice that I’m trying to follow when planning my last months here:

“Try to orchestrate a smooth departure. ‘Goodbyes are important,’ Victor Hunter has written. ‘Without a meaningful good-bye, an effective closure, there cannot be a creative hello, a hopeful commencement’ (1986, 179). Start planning your leave-taking many months ahead. Make a list of the people you want to be sure to say good-bye to and arrange for that to happen in due course. Decide what places you want to visit before you leave and make those arrangements, and buy those items you’ve always wanted but put off getting. In general identify personal and professional loose ends and tie them up. Coming home is burdensome enough; don’t make it worse by leaving badly” (37).

Now I know “orchestrate” is a bit of an unrealistic goal. Will my departure feel “smooth?” Probably not. I can’t plan a “perfect exit,” but I can think about what’s important to me before I leave. I’ve rushed (or had to rush) transitions in the past, and I don’t want to do that this year.

Most importantly, I need adequate time to thank everyone in my life here and everyone who helped me get here. You don’t stay for a second year because of anything except the people – because you have people who support you here (Poland) and people who support you at home (Chicago).

One of my friends asked me last week if I’d thought about my “exit strategy” yet and that conversation started me thinking. Perhaps it's a little premature to think about the end of my service here - I know it's only mid-January. But time flies here and I don't want June to sneak up on me. Here are my initial thoughts:

(Thanks for listening, readers. It’s helpful for me to begin to process this information and the reality that it’s my last semester here.)

Proposed Exit Strategy:

Here are the facts:

I teach all of my students, in Cieszyn and Český Těšín, from preschoolers to teenagers to grandmothers, once a week. With all the spring holidays in April and May (and a winter break at the end of January too), I have only 14 lessons left with my students before June 1. Only 14!

Every week I teach 14 groups of students at the high school/junior high, 3 extra Matura preparation classes, 2 preschool/kindergarten classes, 1 elementary school student, 1 German teacher, 2 business English classes, and 5 adult conversation classes.

It’s a lot of students to say goodbye to and I’ve decided to start saying goodbye at the end of April to give myself 3 weeks to say goodbye (the 1^st week of May is a holiday). I’ll teach all of my school classes (preschool – high school) until June 1, of course, and say goodbye to those students last, but I’m planning to start saying goodbye to my extra, outside of school lessons at the end of April. I know that saying goodbye to everyone my last week (or even my last two weeks) would feel incredibly overwhelming and I want to have time to thank every one of my students. I’ve decided that 3 weeks is the magic number and when I need to start saying goodbye to my students.

And I don’t only want to thank my students. I want to thank all the people who have supported me over the past two years...

1. The directors at my 3 schools and all of the amazing school office assistants

2. The other teachers at my schools (especially the other English teachers)

3. My friends here in Poland and the Czech Republic

4. Members of the ELCA’s Global Mission staff

5. My congregation, St. Luke’s

6. My family and friends in Chicago / the U.S.

I also want to / need to...

1. Submit my second semester grades for my students and submit end of the year paperwork.

2. Organize the teaching materials and resources I’ve gathered together over the past two years for the next teacher, including a packet of practice Matura exams for the person who teaches the seniors next year.

3. Write a “Cieszyn Guidebook” for the next person to teach here. It’ll include maps of the town, a list of stores, important telephone numbers, how to get to and from the nearest airports, useful websites, and a mini-guide that explains all the quirks of my apartment and its appliances.

4. Leave my apartment sparkling clean for the next volunteer.

5. Either close or transfer (to another American teacher) my bank/cell phone/Internet accounts and contracts.

And items on my personal “To Do” list:

1. Say goodbye to my Cieszyn favorites. My favorite hikes/trails, favorite tea spots, people at my favorite vegetable and fruit stands, etc.

2. Act like a tourist (ignore everyone’s stares) and photograph all of the images that were my “life landscapes” for two years. The Market Square, the Post Office, the bakery. The walk to my schools, the bus station, etc.

3. And do a few other “silly” items including...finally learning how to tie a scarf the way they do here, learn how to make Polish Easter eggs, eat one more slice of my favorite Polish cheesecake, go to the market the minute it opens on my last Saturday morning here (my favorite time to go), etc.

Of course, there’s also the “re-entry” part I need to think about. What happens after I depart when I get back to Chicago? What am I “re-entering” in June? But for right now - at least today - I’m happy to focus on first and foremost working toward a meaningful goodbye.

Thanks for listening, readers!

Little Peter Pans

Happy 2011! Yikes! I haven’t posted since Thanksgiving. Here are my Poland December highlights (Chicago December highlights to follow in a later post):

Preschool/Kindergarten English Lessons

You might remember me saying that this year I’m teaching one preschool class and one kindergarten class in the Czech Republic on Mondays. Here’s an update about our lessons. (Sorry, I can't post any photographs. Teachers aren’t allowed to photograph the students at this school.)

3-year-olds: Their curiosity and desire to learn new English words is wonderfully insatiable. I teach them 3-4 new words every week, but they’re always asking me how to say different words in English that I haven’t taught them yet. For example, during one lesson in December when we learned “red,” “blue,” “yellow,” and “green,” one of my students pointed to a purple pillow and asked me, “What color is it [in English]?” I said, “purple” and he said “No!” and laughed and laughed and laughed. He didn’t believe me! He thought I was saying a pretend word. When his mom picked him up, he told her that, “Sarah is very, very silly and makes me laugh.” Luckily, 99.9% of the time, they believe me when I teach them a new word.

Also, now that it’s freezing outside and almost always snowing, my 3-year-olds arrive to our lesson all bundled up like the little brother in “A Christmas Story”. I call them my little “Peter Pans” because they only wear tights (no pants/trousers) under their snow pants (both the girls and the boys) and run around in the lesson only wearing their tights and t-shirts.

5/6-year-olds: I’m always laughing during our lessons because they are the most angelic, mischievous kindergarteners I’ve ever met. What’s amazing is that we’ve settled into a great routine and I never feel like we have difficulties communicating. Sometimes I say they communicate with “caveman sounds” – little grunts or noises that mean, “Sarah, my green colored pencil needs to be sharpened,” or “Where did the cat puppet go?” We have a “Hello” song we sing at the beginning of the lesson and a “Goodbye” song for the end. Whenever I try to start singing the “Goodbye” song, they say, “No! No goodbye!” And they give the best hugs when their moms and dads pick them up. And they also frequently convince me to give them two “reward stickers” at the end of the lesson instead of one.

Our favorite word-learning games:

1. We have picture flashcards for all our new words because, of course, they can’t read! They love it when – after we’ve practiced the new words for one or two lessons – I point to a flashcard and confidently say the wrong word. (For example, I point to “Daddy” but say “Sister”.) They love correcting me.

2. One day, I hid our 6 new flashcards around the classroom and sang a silly little “let’s all look for (fill in one of the new vocabulary words)” song. Now it’s a staple activity and sometimes they’ll start singing the song to tell me that they want to play the game. We hide all of the flashcards in the room and then I say what word to look for. Sometimes I let them hide the flashcards although I learned the hard way that you MUST pay very close attention if you let them hide the cards. Turn your back for one minute and you’re in trouble. Try convincing a mischievous 5-year-old to tell you where he hid his card after you and the other students have searched unsuccessfully for 3 minutes.

Mini-Lawrence Reunion

It was a Lawrence Class of 2009 mini-reunion when Vanessa visited for a weekend! She’s teaching English in Austria this year and traveled up to Cieszyn the first weekend of December. On Saturday, we traveled to the picturesque village of Štramberk in the Czech Republic and on Sunday we went to Krakow for the Christmas market and nativity scene competition. Here's a photograph of Štramberk and I love this photograph of Vanessa because not only is she wearing her Green Bay Packer hat, but she’s also sitting on my favorite train that I call “Mister Rogers’ trolley” because it only has one car and it’s red.

What I loved best about her visit was the opportunity to talk with someone who’s also teaching English in Central Europe and all the time we had to share our experiences with someone who is in the same (or at least a very similar) boat. I loved talking with Vanessa about European school systems, Central Europe’s obsession with asking customers to pay for everything with exact change, and how we’ve suddenly found ourselves covering every slice of bread we eat with butter because that’s how they eat it here. It was especially fun to talk to someone who’s also experiencing the “they-brought-me-here-to-teach-English-but-by-the-time-I-leave-I-probably-won’t-be-able-to-speak-a-single-word-of-it” phenomenon. Despite the fact that I spend the majority of my waking hours teaching and therefore speaking English, it sometimes amazes me how quickly I feel I’m losing some of my vocabulary, particularly slang and idioms. (Lately my favorite activity is – sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally – inventing my own idioms when I can’t remember the correct ones. Since last winter I’ve subscribed to a website for English language learners that e-mails me 3 English idioms a day in the hope that this will help keep them fresh in my mind. And it has helped...a little.) Vanessa and I frequently asked each other questions like, “What’s the word that means...,” “What’s it called when...,” and “What’s the idiom that starts...” Our Austrian and Polish students would have laughed out loud if they had heard our conversations – we didn’t always sound like native speakers; frequently we sounded much more like our students!

Christmas Parties at School

At the end of December, when other teachers at my school are expected to administer final exams, I’m expected to throw American Christmas parties during my lessons. It’s a pretty awesome job requirement.

About half of my classes voted for Christmas baking parties and the other half voted for a lesson of singing Christmas carols and playing Christmas-themed language games. When I learned that my students had never eaten cupcakes before (probably one of my favorite desserts in the world), a few Christmas cookie parties turned into Christmas cupcake parties. I might never eat a yellow cupcake (I baked 12 dozen) or a sugar cookie (I baked 14 dozen) again, but the baking parties were a blast. I especially loved watching my students decorate their cookies and cupcakes. Everyone, from my 8^th grade students to my 12^th grade students, took great care in decorating their treats and created beautiful, edible works of art. And my students all agreed that cupcakes are delicious!

For my classes that didn’t want to bake and decorate, we sang their favorite carols and played silly Christmas games. Their favorite games were “Blind Drawing” and “Snowballs” (not very creative game names, I know). For “Blind Drawing,” students had to "blind draw" a Christmas scene described by another student (they hold books with paper over their heads so they can’t see what they are drawing). It’s great speaking and listening practice and the works of “art” they create are quite funny.

“Snowballs” was the last game we played, and it didn’t – I’ll admit – have an English component except for listening to the rules. Here’s how you play. You blindfold two students, give each student a cup, put a bowl of cotton balls (the “snowballs”) in-between them, and give them 1 minute to transfer as many "snowballs" as they can from the bowl to their cup. It’s a pretty impossible game because cotton balls are so lightweight that you can never tell if you actually have some on your spoon or not. It’s hilarious to watch someone very carefully transport air (they think they have a cotton ball on their spoon but they don’t) from the bowl to his or her cup. And there’s always lots of cheating because students love to secretly empty the blindfolded person’s cup during the game. We laughed so hard we cried when playing this game. My students always work so incredibly hard in my lessons so this was a fun, silly way to end a great semester.

Officially Legal!

In the fall, we had a couple very serious difficulties when trying to renew my visa for Year Two due to a slight miscommunication between the school and the visa office about the renewal process. Luckily the government granted me a “special circumstance” short-term visa to cover my first three months of teaching, but only under the condition that I would have to leave Poland for a while in December and then re-enter if I wanted to apply for January – June. My director joked that it was either Ukraine or Chicago for Christmas (the problem is that I had to leave not only Poland but the EU). Don’t worry, it’s a story with a happy ending – I had a wonderful two weeks in Chicago, and yesterday I picked up my new Poland visa/residence card and now I’m legal until the end of the school year! I left Poland on December 18 for Chicago...and here's where the next post will pick up!