TEFL Dalton Minnesota

Oh, Ukraine As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, I have had the pleasure to come back to American and share Ukraine's culture with my friends and family. They love to hear about Ukrainian traditions, what they like to wear, what they like to eat (and what crazy things they made me eat), and Ukraine's history. However, probably their favorite thing to hear was about my out of control, hard-headed, problematic, attitude giving, greatest people ever, my students. One of the biggest problems that I faced as a teacher in a small village, in Ukraine, was to get students interested in learning english. Unfortunately, most of my students would not ever really use the english that they learned because they would always continue to live in my village, not ever have the money (or government approval) to travel, or hold a job where they will have to speak english. I made sure to teach lessons about different cities in America that they were interested in. I would also use song lyrics to supplement these activities (I taught about New York and used the song ‘Empire State of Mind' by Jay-Z). I was able to teach them about New York and the lyrics to one of their favorite songs. We would also watch a lot of movies about teenagers in America, American holidays like Halloween, etc. These were all great things that helped me get my students interested in learning english, however, it was once I started spending more time with my students outside of the classroom that got them interested in wanting to learn about me. I taught them American football, we had summer camps in other cities together, etc. and the students wanted to do this with me because we genuinely enjoyed hanging out with each other. Another problem that I and the students had to face were with the other teachers. They were only interested in their top students and would literally act like the other students were not even in the classroom. They would only pass out worksheets to the top students while the other students just sat there. This type of teaching made it very difficult for me to teach them because they thought that they never had to participate in any english class. It was a struggle to get them to complete the exercise or practice speaking because their level of english was so poor that they almost did not know any english at all and at this point did not want to learn english either. It was also hard for them to understand that I truly did care about them and wanted to see them succeed because no other teacher had ever told them that. A third problem that the students had a very difficult time with was pronunciation. All of the english teachers had never spoken with a native english speaker, and most of them had incorrectly learned the english Alphabet. I will never forget hearing the word ‘exe-mined' (spoken like that) and wondering for days what she meant until I realized she was trying to say examined. It was also very frustrating having to teach the students how to pronounce the letter ‘V' especially because they have the same sound in their alphabet, but the teachers just didn't know better and taught it as a ‘W' sound. They would also pronounce clothes with two syllables like cloth-es. These were very hard habits to break. Even though I came across more problems than I could think of or thought were an actual possibility, I learned so much about the different types of learners and how to overcome any problem in the classroom, especially the unforeseen problems because those happened on pretty much on a daily basis. I am still in touch with most of my students and they love to call and tell me what funny things their english teachers' say or do. Most of them now have jobs where they need to speak english and took the jobs specifically for that reason. I also have many students that plan to study aboard in an english speaking country. I think I learned just as much from my students as they did from me.