Teaching and School

I have now been teaching for a few weeks at a private school where they only teach languages.  It actually isn’t what we would think of as a school, it is actually an apartment.  There are only 4 rooms.  3 have a table with chairs and a blackboard.  The room I am in most of the time is more like a living room.  There are 2 couches a soft chair and then two regular chairs with only a coffee table if you need something to lean on.  The primary language taught is English but they also have classes for German, Turkish and Bosnian.  I obviously only teach English.

There are a number of different levels of English:

Beginner 1, 2, 3

Elementary 1, 2, 3

Pre Intermediate 1, 2, 3

Intermediate 1, 2, 3

Upper Intermediate 1, 2, 3

Advanced 1, 2, 3

Each class is only 8 weeks long and meets just twice a week.  At the end of the 8 weeks the students take a test and if they pass they are allowed to advance to the next level class.  Currently I teach Pre-Intermediate 2 and 3, Intermediate 3 and Upper Intermediate 1.  I also tutor a few other students throughout the week.  My students range in age from 12 to mid 40’s all in the same class.  My younger students are still students but the adults are a diverse group.  I have law, psychology and engineering students, I have doctors, business owners, accountants etc.  My classes run from early evening to about 8:30 or 9:30pm.  

Besides the age of my students there are a few big differences between teaching and school here versus the US.  First, for the younger students, there actually aren’t enough schools for all of them.  This causes them to have some odd schedules.  The schools run on split shifts.  One group of students go to school until 12 or 1 or 2 in the afternoon and then the second shift comes in and they go to school until 7, 8 or 9 at night.  To be fair they then rotate every other week as to what group comes in the morning and which group comes in late afternoon.  

Here in Bosnia it is still legal to smoke almost everywhere.  If you go in an office, doctors office, place to eat you will see or at least smell cigarettes.  My school isn’t really an exception.  The rule is you’re not supposed to smoke inside after 4pm but since the owner is rarely there they usually do.  They’ll sit in the one little office or kitchen and smoke.  So I don’t like leaving and stinking like cigarettes but it beats working in Philly and having kids curse at me everyday and threaten to kill me.