The Hilarity of My Polish Classroom

In the States, a TA means you're generally assisting with classes and since I'm not trained in teaching or the technical aspects of the English language, I (wrongfully) expected something like a grading assistant and just hanging out in the class being the "American."

Hah.

I am 22 years old with a degree in Political Science in charge of teaching three groups of Polish students American Phonetics.  I have two classes of second year and one class of first year students.

There IS a syllabus for the first year class, but it's in Polish.  While it has been translated, I'm still not sure what parts of it mean.  Like 20% of their grade comes from phonemic transcriptions.  I didn't even know how to pronounce phonemic this weekend, much less teach it.

Saturday, I met with a professor to talk about what my classes would cover.  She said I could do whatever I wanted.  Still not sure what that means the students are supposed to know at the end of the year.

So class started today right?  It went pretty well...made them write and read out loud a little bit and then showed some funny clips of Americans making fun of the British accents.  We are in American Studies, so their focus is learning American accents...totally appropriate for class.

Funny thing is, I don't have a class roster OR enough CHAIRS FOR MY STUDENTS!

Not even desks so they could, I don't know take notes, not enough CHAIRS.  Only about half of the chairs have the desk things attached.  People sat on the floor or the "teacher's desk" like it was no big thing. 

And the things I've learned on the first day.  One of my girls is obsessed with African American people...she literally said in class "I love everything about Black people."  And proceeded to ask if she could read Snoop Dawg lyrics for her homework.  (I said yes.  Refer to where I don't really know what they're supposed to learn.)

Or when they asked if I was a Democrat or Republican.  One girl said, "We always thought that all people your age liked Obama and it's just weird to see someone so young be conservative."  (I just smiled and said there are more people like me.)

And one boy asked if he could skip my class because he has already studied American phonetics at another university and is taking too many classes to come to all of them.  (Yes...he said essentially that.)

So to recap: I am teaching classes that I don't know what are supposed to be about to students who have VERY interesting preconceived notions about Americans in a room smaller than my bedroom without enough chairs for all my students.

Hah.

This probably explains my uncontrollable laughter earlier when Mom J asked how classes went.