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Published: February 17th 2008
So, here I am, almost half way through my TEFL experience. I can’t believe it’s getting close to two weeks since I left the UK. It feels like only a heartbeat ago, but also an eternity since I was sitting on the plane at Manchester Airport watching the snow fall and wondering if we’d actually ever take off. Thankfully we did, albeit 4 hours later than planned. Two pretty uneventful plane rides later, I arrived at Kolkata’s Netaji Subhash Bose International Airport, or Dum Dum airport as it is better known. I was relieved to see my bag appear on the carousal (I never trust that it will be successfully checked all the way through). Immigration was simple, and I was soon in the arrivals lounge. As I eagerly looked for a signboard baring my name, I heard a cry of ‘Hello Madam, TEFL International?’ And was soon whisked away by our driver, Abijeed.
By now it was 8pm Saturday, and I left Skipton at around 2pm on Friday, so keeping my eyes open was a struggle. I did so long enough to notice how orderly (by Indian standards anyway) the roads and surroundings seemed to be. A Million miles
away from the chaos I had imagined, thanks to the ‘black hole’ picture I had firmly in my mind. I have only realised since arriving that the black hole actually refers to the events of one night dating back to 1756, where (debatably) 123 European prisoners met with their deaths after being forced to spend the night in a single 14x18foot cell, without water in the sweltering heat of June in Calcutta. This story is somewhat different to my understanding that the ‘black hole’ was a term used to illustrate the massive amounts of poverty, suffering, overcrowding and madness I still half believed would greet me on the streets of the city I had chosen to make my home for the next four weeks. Andrea my Canadian housemate, who is visiting Asia for the first time, would probably disagree with me here, and say that there is more than enough madness and poverty around. I sit and wait for the India bug to bite with her, it will, it will!
I got a big surprise when about 30 minutes after leaving the airport, we pulled up at the ‘guest house’. It might just be me, but as this was
Room 2
Wardrobe doors open to try n get rid of the beautiful, ahem, moth ball smell!!how our accommodation had always been described in all the literature I received, I had pictured some small scale set up, probably a family run, converted house, with only a few rooms. What actually greeted me was at least seven massive tour blocks, ours is the least tall, with 17 floors. Interestingly, all the towers have a name that relates to Scotland, ours is called ‘Loch’. Mr. Dutta, our friendly, eager to please but somewhat inept caretaker met us at the car. He went to great lengths to show me how to lock and unlock the door, which, lets be honest here, was by no means rocket science. He also thoroughly ensured I could tell the difference between the kitchen and bathroom, before leaving me in peace. I quickly unpacked a few things before passing out into my rock hard bed, but come on, it wouldn’t be India if the bed was comfy.
Sunday was spent wandering the local area, Garia, which is pretty quiet and residential, but we are lucky to have a small shopping mall and cinema complex 2minutes away, and a couple of tasty restaurants up the road. It was also the day for meeting my
Room 3
Not always this neat n tidy would you believe
fellow classmates, and in the evening a group of us went out for dinner. There was Kaia, my American housemate, Robert from Australia, Jason from Scotland and his German fiancée Brigetta. The evening was a success and I went to bed with high hopes of having a fun and productive four weeks.
On Monday morning we were collected at 9.30 and drove for about 15minutes to the school. The school is in a nice area, surrounded by residential property but not far from a main road where there are restaurants and an array of local shops. The actual TEFL programme occupies the ground floor of the building, and is pretty small but bright and perfectly suited for the task. The first day was spent being given introductions and playing some team building games, and also included a question and answer session. It was from day two that the ‘real work’ would begin.
Our trainer Sangeeta is excellent. She has a dynamic and enthusiastic approach to teaching us, and she got stuck in quickly, I was concerned that the first week could be pretty dull going through a lot of introductory stuff and not getting down to the point.
Motee
The gorgeous puppy dog that lives with the family above our TEFL school. However in the first week we had already had two sessions on a one to one basis with a child in a Bengali Medium School. Mine was 12 year old Kumar, and bless his heart, I literally made him sweat, that’s how nerve wracking the whole process was for him! We also had three sessions of Bengali lessons, to give us the experience of being the student, which were fun, and we began lesson planning and practicing the teaching techniques on our peers.
Each of our lessons begin with a 5 minute warmer, and because during the training we are constantly meeting new students with each teaching practice, our warmer always takes the format;
A: Hi, my name is Kate, what’s your name?
B: My name is ____________
A: Nice to meet you.
B: Nice to meet you too.
During the course of the warmer, these four lines get repeated a total of 14 times. Now, two weeks down the line after the seven of us having to ‘teach’ the warmer to the group twice, to students twice, and to watch each other teach students it five times so far, I think we all go to sleep
Awwwww!
Motee wrapped in her sleep sheet looking all girlie n enjoying the morning sun! at night with those innocent looking four lines reverberating around our brains!
We quickly got into a routine of pick up to school, classes, lunch, classes, dropped home, a couple of hours homework, dinner, bed. So, by our first weekend, which fell on Sunday Monday instead of Saturday/Sunday, we were all excited about taking the time to explore ‘down town’, living with an American and a Canadian is not good for my English!!! Four of us jumped in a Taxi on Sunday morning and got him to drop us on Park Street, the main street in the centre. We soon began to realise that Kolkata is pretty shut on a Sunday, but thankfully Café Coffee Day was still open, so I introduced Andrea, Rob and Dan to their first taste of heaven, although I’m not sure they understood what all the fuss was about. To me, my café frappe with a brownie and ice cream was bliss!! We then spent the morning wandering the streets and taking in life as it went on around us, stopping now and again for a fresh juice or to be taken on a detour to someone’s shop or whatever. Before lunch we ended
up at the Maiden, a massive expanse of grass where literally dozens of cricket games were going on, Rob, the Aussie soon got involved in one, while Andrea, Dan and I watched on and enjoyed the sunshine. We managed to soon have an audience of Chai, Chat and Cigerette sellers, and Rob caused lots of excitement, with one guy joining us sat watching the game, and kept on demanding that we applaud as Rob hit a six or did something else impressive! Next it was lunch time at a Chinese buffet restaurant, which was lush. More street wandering, and a few beers and a thali later, we headed home, after a really fun day out, and I finally felt like I was back in India, yay!
The Monday was holiday from school as it was Saraswati Pooja. Saraswati is the god of education and learning, so its traditional no one has lessons that day, but instead poojas are held at school. So, we were all invited to the ceremony at our TEFL school, which involved some prayer, once the priest eventually arrived, eating of the fruit and a big lunch. It was a nice morning, but like all things
Cricket Playing
Where Rob played cricket with the Victoria Memorial in the background Indian dragged on a little, so it was nice to get home and spend the afternoon chilling and preparing for week two of the course.
The second week has consisted mainly of teaching practice, lesson planning and lesson observing. With some horrible grammar thrown in too, hey it can’t all be fun! On Tuesday we went into school to observe Sangeeta take a lesson in the format we would be following ourselves. On Wednesday we taught our first lesson in pairs, at an all girls school where the English standard is very good, to break us in gently. Thursday was the big day, the day of our first individual teaching practice. We were split into two groups, so that two of us could teach at the same time, and so the classes could be split in half to give us around 20 students instead of 40. I was up first in our group, and had the warmer I’ve already mentioned, followed by core vocabulary of going to the movies. Having spent the afternoon the day before designing my visual props, I was elated when they seemed to go down really well, even if my class control skills need, hmmmm,
'DownTown'
A glimpse of central Calcutta, with a cycle rickshaw taking centre stage quite a lot of work! Was such a buzz seeing them seem to be enjoying themselves, whether they were being a little noisy or not!
So, that’s pretty much the first half of my TEFL International experience, and my first two weeks in Kolkata. I am really looking forward to the next two, but they will be done before I know it if they fly by as fast as these first two have. And then, its back down to Goa for a while, before moving on, to hopefully teach for a year or so in Vietnam. Really excited about life in general right now, so many opportunities to be grabbed, places to explore and things to learn, BRING IT ON!!!!!
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charlene
non-member comment
Hey
Wow, sounds like your having a really good time!! Cant wait to get over there myself!! Will see you very soon then you can tell me how different it all is to english teaching!! x x