It's been a while since my last blog post, so I thought it was about time for an update.
I feel like I'm getting into my stride with teaching now. I'm really starting to enjoy it! I've done lessons on Facebook, smoking, bonfire night, prom, report writing...and many more! The staff are very friendly and mostly helpful, and the students mostly are enthusiastic and interested. I especially enjoy teaching the 8th form (equivalent of year 13) because they speak very good English and really like hearing about England and things, and tend to participate in the lessons really well.
There have, however, been a few 'teaching trials', which I feel many of my fellow teaching assistants will understand:
- Some teachers do not reply to emails, ever, which means I have no idea what they would like me to plan for the lesson, and then decide to tell me what they want me to do an hour (or less) beforehand!
- It's hard to get 15 year olds to speak. They just sit there and look at you blankly until you start rambling like a crazy person and wasting five minutes of the lesson.
- Some students just love to talk, only they love to talk in German, and that doesn't really help in an English lesson.
- Some teachers like to sit back and let you lead the lesson, which is fine unless the class misbehave. Others like to participate in the lesson, which is fine unless they say something that isn't quite true, and then you have to decide whether to correct them in front of the class or just let it go and hope the students didn't take it in.
I went to one of my schools' Maturaball last week, which is basically like their year 13 prom, but they tend to do it earlier in the year. It's very different to prom back home though, as it's not just the students that go to the ball, but also their families, teachers, previous students of the school, and younger students too - so there were a lot of people! There isn't a sit down meal, but you have the opportunity to buy drinks and food while you're there. All of the food is made by the students, just like the decorations and invitations, because the whole of the Maturaball is organised and funded entirely by the students. This means that in the weeks leading up to the Maturaball, students are selling a lot of cake at break time, so I'm not complaining! I was really impressed at how much effort they had put into the organisation, and on top of that, they also provided the entertainment. There were group class dances, as well as a teachers dance, a tombola and many sketches that took place throughout the evening. I thoroughly enjoyed my time, and it was a great opportunity to get to know members of staff better and practise my German.
As last weekend was Halloween, I decided some baking was in order. We didn't really celebrate or anything, but my housemate, her boyfriend and I went to a lovely tea house in Linz for a relaxing evening of tea drinking and then came back to carve pumpkins. We were very impressed at Markus' attempt at carving the smallest pumpkin I have ever seen. And of course, I carved a minion into my pumpkin...
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| My minion pumpkin, Markus' tiny pumpkin and Charlotte's pumpkin |
It's also been really lovely to spend time with the other TAs - I feel like I'm making some wonderful friends who I have a lot in common with. It's great to have people I can go exploring with, but also who I can stay in and watch movies with :)
During my days off, I've been spending time working on my year abroad project, for which I have a deadline at the end of November, so a lot of my free time will be taken up with that for the next few weeks, but I have been off on some adventures too, because I want to make the most of my time over here!
For example yesterday, three of the TAs and I went on an adventure to Altausee, which coincidentally is where part of the new James Bond film is filmed! (Everyone was very excited in the cinema I can tell you!) It was honestly so beautiful. We took a train from Linz to Bad Aussee and then a bus up to Altaussee, which is a little village in the mountains. There is a lake there that you can walk around in about 2 hours, and I will add some pictures of our walk because the autumn colours and the reflections in the lake and the mountains surrounding us were breath-taking!
I have plans to do lots more walks like this, and to go and explore lots of towns and villages around Austria, because it is such a beautiful country with such a variety of scenery - I really love it here :) I am also hoping to join some sports classes in the next few weeks with the French assistant at my school, as it will be a good way to keep fit whilst also meeting new people. My aim now is to get involved in a lot more activities and meet new people to practise my German, because I feel like that will help me settle in a lot more.
The final thing I wanted to say is that I am starting to make some progress with the dialect over here. It's not easy at all, and at times sounds like a completely different language...here is a link to a YouTube video that gives you an idea of what I'm up against! The man in the video is actually from Upper Austria, where I am, so that is how people here sound :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkuAd97WUSw
Thanks for reading! I'll hopefully have lots more adventures to tell you about in my next blog post :)
Laura :)
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