Coyans in the Czech Republic

This is the school where I teach and my girls go to school

countdown to summer: 1 day!!!

a day in the life

Tomorrow I begin my summer holiday. Feeling sentimental (emphasis on the mental), I wanted to give you a snapshot of what a typical day is like for me at my work.

5 am: wake up, drink coffee, write blog post

6am: wake up girls, sing horribly to motivate them to get out of bed, feed them breakfast

6:15: get ready for work

7:20: walk to school (we walked every day this year...blizzard, rain, 2 meters of unshoveled snow...you name it)

7:30: arrive at work, greet students in hallways, answer a few questions that they have, look at the substitution list to see if I have to substitute for anyone during my free hour that day

7:40: go into the teachers' lounge, greet fellow teachers, hope no one has a question for me as my Czech language skills haven't warmed up yet

7:45: go in my office, greet my fellow English teachers, gather my basket and boom box and supplies and go to my first class

7:50: enter classroom, am bombarded by 25 kids all speaking rapid Czech wanting to tell me about their dog, their boo boo, their uncle's hernia...I try to listen to each one while I set up the day's activity, I spend most of my time saying, "Wow! what a story", or "Really?", or "Cool!", or "That's too bad"

7:55: bell rings, teaching time ( an lesson here is 45 minutes with a 5 minute break in between. I teach in 13 separate classrooms in two different wings of the school carrying about 50 pounds of books, basket, supplies and boom box. Each wing is separated by no less than 6 flights of tsairs and the wings have two floors a piece separated by 2 flights of stairs. That means alot of running up and down stairs carrying a heavy load mostly done in high heels!)

9:30: 20 minute recess, visit the girls in their classrooms, listen to them complain about how they don't like their snack, back to my office to gather more supplies, then off to the teachers' lounge where inevitably a colleague asks me a question and in the moment I take to form a response they assume the blank look on my face is one signifying a lack of understanding and they repeat their question more slowly and loudly as if talking to a significantly less intelligent creature. I understand Czech 100x better than I speak it. I understand almost everything except if an important word in the sentence is one I haven't heard before then I could lose the meaning. But for the most part I can keep up. The problem lies in the quickness of the response. Often I am not quick enough on the draw and a lack of comprehension is assumed. For the most part I am treated as the "slow cousin" if you know what I mean.

9:50: bell rings, off to my next class (typically I teach 5 classes a day) again bombarded by 20+ kids all talking at once in rapid Czech. I think this is why I am so tired by the end of the day. My brain has to process so much. Add on to that a 2 hour staff meeting completely in Czech where the teachers all yell at each other at once and I am ready for a nap.

10:35: tired already, off to my next class, a parent needs directions to a certain teacher's office, I try to give them directions in good Czech so they don't think I am a dope. That uses up the last of my brain power. Now I am running on fumes...two more hours to go...

12:25: bell rings, HOORAY!!, time to go home, greet kids in hallway (in English...it is so cute.."Good afternoon, Mrs. Coyan!" they say), go back to office , gather my stuff, papers to grade etc...head to the teachers' lounge, a colleague says to me "Sure is cold outside, isn't it?" but she uses a colloquial word for cold that I have never heard before so to me it sounds like "Sure is bi476jdf, isn't it?". I stare at her dumbly, slack-jawed, drool, the works. She looks at me with the all too familar "Poor Krista, she doesn't understand anything" face and immediately switches to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood Czech. "It. Is. Cold. Yes?". I say, "yes, it is| and then wish the earth would open up and swallow me. Sometimes I want to tell people that I really am intelligent, look at me read! Look at me write coherently!!! Look everyone!! But I just skulk away feeling a little more humbled.

12:30: walk home, eat lunch, laugh at myself a little and know that I will get up the next day and eat humble pie all over again...