English Lessons

For the past few months my friend Kenzie and I have been teaching an English class. I am sure this must worry all of you reading my blog and noticing more than a few errors. Sorry! There is so much editing I can do before I would become disgusted with my writing or never actually put posts up.  Anyway, I have have been passing on my excellent grasp of the English language to the five women in my class, and I actually think we did a pretty good job. I'm not always sure about some of the grammar rules and when I break things down for them I sometimes feel like English is just a big mess, but they are getting the hang of it. These woman aren't studying to take the big test at the end of high school, they are studying for when they travel, or so that they can help their children become fluent. That gives us the freedom to teach them things that will come in handy on a daily basis, not what the present perfect continuous tense, whatever that means, is. Plus it helps that the woman are so nice and they put up excellently with being taught by a couple of teenagers. They bring us coffee and treats, and focus while we teach them. They even came to see us preform our dance and me give my speech at my high school. When I first started teaching the class, I as so excited. I truly believed that we had power to really make an impact on these woman's lives. If we helped them better their English then maybe they could get a better job, or help their children move up. Part way through I became sort of disillusioned, they were missing classes, and not studying and though I still enjoyed teaching them it started to feel like more of a chore. When they started slacking off, we started slacking off as well, not putting at much time into our lesson plans, or explaining things as clearly. In the end though, we pulled through and I think we all got something pretty great out of the class. These English classes won't be a deciding factor in their lives but it was a chance for them and us to get to know an age group that we wouldn't normally interact with from a different country.


A week ago we had our last dinner and said goodbye to them for who knows how long. They said they wanted to come to the states, maybe even do some kind of exchange with the students they teach at the elementary school. Though I know it probably won't work out, I really hope it does. The whole time we were teaching them it felt so funny for them to call us "teacher", probably because they all have about 10 years on us, but I think it was also because though we were teaching them English a case could easily have been made for them having been the teachers. They corrected not only our Turkish but explained things about Turkish culture, and were one more window into Turkish life. After six months of four hours a week lessons, it was sad to say goodbye.