Fight apathy... or don't

There was so much cool graffiti in Krakow. I should have photographed it. That's where I got the title for this post. There was one with a tag of a manatee and underneath it, it read 'oh, the huge manatee' which made me laugh out loud. Get it? Huge manatee? Humanity?

My classes went well today! I had two groups. The first was a very large group with mixed age kids, but apparently it was so large because there was a misunderstanding about the times at which the younger kids should show up. Tomorrow will be more organized. The second group was comprised of younger kids and we had so much fun! I was really surprised at myself for how well I handled both classes and didn't get flustered or too nervous. Some of the older kids intimidate me a little because they're too cool. They just stare at me when I talk to them. I'll win them over. It's so hard to tell what kids think is cool and what's lame! There is a fine line.

Today we started off playing name games and tossing a ball around. I taught them different ways to say hello, including 'sup which quickly became a class favorite. We wrote our names on index cards and then talked about our favorite colors, where we were from, and our favorite season. I'm not sure if they knew the word season though. I showed them a big map and pointed to Wisconsin, and was really surprised when one boy hollered out Wisconsin! before I even finished writing it on the board. I explained the photo voices project that I'd like to do with them but I'm not sure if they grasped the concept. Hopefully my ideas about that will come to fruition once they have the cameras in their hands.

So tomorrow I will have my first class of 25 10 - 12 year-olds and the second class of 16 6 - 9 year-olds. There was to be a third group of adults and parents after that, but they never showed up today. I assume they all have jobs during the day. A teacher at the school named Justyna will be there with me for all the classes. Today she sat off to the side and chimed in when needed but she let me run most of the class.

The kids are really good at English! I had them doing activities that were stupidly easy for them which made me feel a little silly. I ended up letting both groups out 15 minutes early. The candy was a big hit and I'll have to make sure to divide that up along with my other school supplies so that both two-week sessions will have enough.

Since I have two two-week sessions, I can reuse the same lesson plans for both groups. That makes my job way easier! The second group is lucky because the lessons will be tweaked and perfected and hopefully fool-proof on my part, which will make me more confident and the classes way more fun. I'm using the same structure for both levels but just switching out the activities based on their English ability.

Here's a link to the school. Did I post this already? The classroom is really adorable and a little on the small side but will work just fine. There are lots of plants and windows. Justyna was taking pictures of the class today and said she'd post them there. I just checked and they're not up yet, but should be soon. Check back!

After classes were out, I was able to hang out in the teachers lounge and organize my materials a bit. I have a rough guide for how the next two weeks will be planned, including the letter writing campaign which is a requirement for Learning Enterprises. I have to teach them specific vocab and letter-writing techniques before then, so they'll be able to complete the lesson. Of course I'll give them a template for the letter so they can fill in the blanks to easily personalize it.

Hmmm... I'm trying to post pictures here but it doesn't seem to be working. My host siblings Jarek and Dominika and I played around with the silly photo booth tools on my Mac (where you can warp the pictures) and giggled a lot. There are some cute photos and I'll try later to share them with you.

Lots of love to you all.

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