Wiosna Jest Radosna!

Spring has sprung! The weather has turned from slightly chilly to down right balmy, and I am kind of loving it. I do enjoy winter, but it's great to get the plants on the balcony for some full sun. The surprising thing was how quickly the weather turned; one week it snowy and wintery, they next week it was full-blown short season.

The time change helped too (spring forward.) A full week after the US went forward, Europe did as well, which meant that for a week we were only five hours apart. This can cause problems: I keep my computer on EST, so while I was doodling away on something I thought I was late for a lesson, only to realize when I got there that I was an hour early. I was fortunate that it worked out, but whatever. Plus, now I can get up early for the sunrise and have a later-setting day.

Actually, I can't wait for the botanical gardens to re-open.

Students: New Crop

Well, it's not a completely new crop, but there are a few new faces. It seems like the new bourgeoisie are still looking for teachers. For what it is worth (blessing or curse) most of them are nothing like my previous crop. (Some of my first posts are here and here.)

I have the good fortune of one of my students being a teacher (of English, no less!) It sounds a little strange (she even charges the same rate as I do!) but I think it's beneficial for both of us. We trade teaching styles and techniques, plus I get paid.

The other day, one of my students and I walked through Powsin, the culture park in Kabaty. We were going to go to the zip-line park there, which he said was great fun (and I believed him) but, alas, it was closed.

It was fine anyway, we took a seat beneath the shade had a beer (Krolewskie.) We chatted about the recent brouhaha on a recent Polandian post (I highly suggest reading the article and the comments.) I talked about why there are roads lined with empty shells of houses, half-finished. He calmly talked about how there's a bunch of corruption, which slows down public works (like the subway) and that many people build their own houses by themselves, so they simply build over the course of several years as they get the money (foundation one year; frame next; finishing touches on the outside; complete the inside.) Seemed logical to me.

Teaching has allowed me to connect to various parts of Polish life. There's a good mix students: ones from Warsaw, others from towns; some are well off, others (like Tomek) are not so; some are students, while others are middle-aged. What binds them all together is their desire to speak English more naturally—whatever their motives are.

Lessons in Humility

As a student of Polish and a teacher of English, I am faced very often with dealing with the issue of getting over one's own shyness while speaking a language.  At the beginning of every semester of classes, I give my opening spiel about how the students ought to get over any sense of shyness and just be comfortable speaking.

I usually say something akin to:

"Look, please don't hold back while speaking, just make an effort.  I swear I won't laugh at you or judge you; I'm just here to help you.  Don't worry about making mistakes.  Native speakers of English make mistakes all the time!  Shakespeare: the greatest English writer and the greatest writer of English, couldn't even spell his own name consistently.  So please, do your best and try your hardest."

It sounds noble but I rarely actually follow it myself.  I don't mean that I laugh at the students and call them morons—at least I don't do it to their faces. (JOKE!!!)  I mean that I am very shy about speaking Polish, especially with a Polish person.

It's been said that one learns a language best while drunk, because it takes away inhibitions and makes one not afraid to make mistakes.  I personally find this to be true, but I have trouble remembering what mistakes I made and what I actually said in general.

Now, here's a story:

When asking someone how to say something, I usually don't remember it very well.  So, if asking, "How do you say 'girl'?" and someone replied "dziewczyna", I would have trouble remembering "dziewczyna."

I was in Germany and had some tsuika (Romanian moonshine made from plums.)  I was getting 'festive' and asked a Pole next to me how one should say cheers.  She said, "na zdrowie."  To which I meant to reply, "I'll ask you again." (in Polish)  but instead said, "Zapamietam Cie zawsze."  She laughed and said, "Do you know what you just said?"  I looked sheepish and said, "What?"

"You just said 'I'll remember you forever!'"  We had a laugh and I quickly said, "Uh, I meant: Zapytam Cie znowu."

Again and again I am faced with a language barrier that seems to insurmountable for me.  I'm not one of those people who can conquer a language easily and confidently (I got straight Cs in Polish, and I did actually try.)  There are plenty of times I end up looking foolish when a person asks me a simple question and I do something totally unrelated to it.  (Once, a security guard asked me to write down my last name and I wrote, "Hey, it's me!  Come on down!"  He gave me the queerest look and repeated the question several times.)

I'm not exactly confident in my abilities (there are uncountable episodes, in which I have embarrassed myself trying to speak/understand Polish) and I'm not very comfortable carrying on a conversation.  Flaws I'd like to work on.

No matter how well you think you know a language (even your native one) someone or something is going to come along and show you something you'll never understand.  Why people enjoy James Joyce is that thing for me.

And so, even though I get paid to coax people along and to be comfortable with the Mother Tongue, I understand where they are coming from, and have been there too many friggan times myself.

Students Redux

Tomasz greeted me yesterday in boxers and socks, but at least he had on a different shirt. He still says some of the most crude things I've ever heard, but this time it was not about the sexual things.

Franio, oh Franio. My three-year old student has left me. Just as well. Want to know how stupid I felt prancing about to kids' songs with a cat puppet on my hand? The answer is, "very."

I was overjoyed that I was able to tell a joke to my students. At the "Speak and Spell" school, I was holding classes with Julita, 23, Barbara, 40-50 or older, and Elizebeta, age not known. Julita speaks English the best, and we were talking about names and naming children. Ben King had told me a good joke, so I used it: A baby indian asks his father, "Where do children get their names?" And the father says, "Well, when a child is born the father takes it and walks outside the teepee and the first thing he sees becomes the child's name. Why do you ask, Two Dogs Fucking?" Julita got it and laughed, but the other two women thought long and hard going over each word. They finally didn't get it. Their loss.
The other student at that school, Martyna (three Martyna students in one summer) probably has some of the greatest potential I have ever seen. She is thirteen and has learned English for three years, but has a wide vocabulary, understanding of grammar, and most of all, can tell the difference between bad and bread, dad and dead, sad and said, etc. She knows about the long "th" and short "th" (wiTHer versus wiTH) but like the other student, Tosia, she doesn't seem like she wants to apply herself. It is a shame.

Die StudentenInnen

As I try to teach the wonders and beauty of the English tongue, I meet a great deal of interesting people. They range from the ten-year old girls in my first ever class, to the the new bourgeois. They have taught me a lot, not just about the Polish Way, but I have been able to study their thinking.

Martyna, Martyna and Tosia were in my first class. They were ten and spoke broken English, (better than I spoke Polish) but I was not intimidated. Everyone at the Benefit school had told me how they liked to chat, but I never really encountered it that much. Claudia (a million blessings upon her) had wisely told me that the hardest part was keeping them interested as they got bored quite easily. Quite easily indeed.
The class was ninety minutes long and was conversation based (can you imagine conversing for an hour and a half with preteens? What the hell was I going to talk about?) The heads of the school, Ewa and Beata, advised me to use the language book which the girls' grammar teacher used (so we could coordinate our lessons.) Claudia said that the girls hated the book and that she never used it once. She also said that they had read and listened to Rumpelstiltskin. I decided I was going to give them a poem by Shel Silverstein because it was easy, interesting, and it would take up a great amount of class time. I found and printed out "One Inch Tall"; I glossed the words I thought would be hard; and then I set about putting down questions, really simple ones like "How long did it take the author to write the poem?" Well, the first class was a near disaster. The poem was way too hard, they disliked it, they didn't respond to any question I asked them even when it concerned themselves. Luckily it was cut twenty minutes short because the girls had to go on a trip (also, there were only two girls there) so I was saved. I took away many valuable lessons. Number One: kids have short attention spans. Number Two: Have a lot of stuff planned. Stuff you thought would take days to cover in a normal class. Number Three: Kids don't consider language games fun.
The second class went much more smoothly, I was able to go over animals and we watched "Wallace and Gromit: Cracking Contraptions." The threesome was there and the class was ten minutes short of two hours, but it was better, albeit exhausting.
The girls were actually extremely smart and had great potential for English. One, Martyna L, actually applied herself and was undaunted by some questions that I thought would be too hard for even some more advanced learners. Martyna S was a character, and she always answer a question, no matter what I asked, with either a "yes" or "no." I would ask, "HOW was your weekend?" Answer: "Yes." (I'd shake my head) "No.... yes? No?" It would be like this for every question. "How old are you?" "No."
Now I come to Tosia. Tosia, I think, had the greatest potential but was a slacker to rival some high schoolers. She was more preoccupied in doodling, poking holes in her paper, chewing her paper and generally bringing down the morale of the class. She refused to play games; she wouldn't voluntarily answer questions; and I was unable to administer a small slap to get her in line. When she had to do any lengthy speaking she would just babble in Polish in that "matter of fact" way which I despise. However, she sometimes showed amazing talent and exhibited that she was more focused on being a pest that really exercising her talent. For instance, I asked a question which was very simple and I knew she could answer. She was doodling and just replied, "Nie rozumiem." (I don't understand.) "Tak, rozumiesz." (Oh, yes, you do, you little brat!) I replied. And then she answered the question!
I had several other classes, one with three teens and one with four adults (and another with a pregnant lady and apparently another group of adult whom I never saw.) The pregnant lady dropped out before I was able to teach, and the adults ended their classes two weeks later because of the end of the school's semester. The teens lasted four classes until their semester also ended. They were my favorite group, but they could be a bit silent sometimes.
I used to arrive at the school really early in the morning, and find that the benches were all wet. I used to blame it on morning dew, but I recently arrived to find a shopkeeper watering the sidewalk and gravel parking lot. He was watering it so earnestly as if he was thinking to himself, "Hmmmm, the broccoli should have come up by now. And I'll be damned if I'm not picking tomatoes by August!"

Apart from teaching at the school I also hold private lessons. My first private lesson was with a fellow, Roberto, who lives to the far southwest of the city and it's quite a commute to get there.
I have another private student, who's probably thirty-five years old, and lives in the southern part of Warsaw. When I first went to his apartment to give a lesson, I entered in the building and thought to myself, "Hmmm, should have brought a gun." On the inside it looks like heroin addicts are overdosing behind the grungy doors, and that at least one hooker is on the premise. His apartment was clean, but he was a bit odd, and at the end he gave me 45PLN in a big, sweaty pile of change. That's like paying someone $45 in bill denominations no greater than five, or paying $10 all in change.