M is for Malta

99 nights plus a white one...

Hello all!

As you may or may not know, I am now entering the final week of my internship in Malta! I am definitely looking forward to going back to The Netherlands, if it were just to shop! Amsterdam and Rotterdam 'd better get ready :-D

So, as I had three lessons last week, I wanted to take it a bit slower and teach two lessons in my final week. This has been the only request I made during the entire internship, and they still chose not to grant me this wish, fantastic! Time to complain this week. Just to let you all know: I have been in Malta from the sixth of July, meaning I have already sort of finished my internship. From that date, I have also worked at EC, and never had any complaints about the way I taught. Should I get into a fight with my colleagues this week, please note that there have also been thirteen successful weeks! :)

Right! So this week I will be teaching another three lessons, at least on Monday. I am hoping that they will change this, so I'll have some more time during the other days of the week. They changed my mini group (which I really enjoyed teaching) for a BIG (14 students) group which contains eight Swiss people who came here with their school. GREAT, 'cause all of them refuse to learn anything in class. I could also see this as a positive thing, as they won't be angry if I don't teach them anything :)

Tonight I am going to Valletta with Rence and Isabel (my other housemate) to visit the 'Notte Bianca', a holiday of sorts on which all shops and museums are open. There will also be lots of festivities, including concerts and cultural exhibits.

Only seven more days to go until I will be back home. Although there were (a lot of) times at which I regretted coming to Malta, I still think it was a great idea to choose this internship. I have learned many things related to teaching, but also about dealing with colleagues. I also know that I would never ever want to work for a school like EC, mainly because of the way people communicate. Still, teaching different nationalities and ages for three months was a fantastic way of preparing for my third year in Nijmegen. BUT FIRST, time to do nothing for another eighty days...

Here I come!

Ċaw, c u soon,

Marien

She's EXPERIENCED

Hi everybody,

We're actually getting somewhere now! This week, I have been teaching three classes, two of which are normally sized, the third one is a Mini Group.

I think I am still learning a lot of new things related to teaching, but also about dealing with various types of people. I do think I have learned a bit more about working together with other people during this internship,  even more so than during my previous school placement. During my Mini Group-lesson, I am mainly focusing on grammar, which is why I am VERY happy to have my 'English Grammar for Students in Higher Education'-book with me. The grammatical items are all in the old canoodle, but the book can still provide some great exercises (as long as they don't refer to the Dutch language). On a related subject: according to my boss, I made a bit of a mistake when I told my students I was from The Netherlands. I have only told one or two students, but now it spreads from one group of students to the other.

The students usually leave after three weeks, telling the others about my nationality before doing so, resulting the LEGACY being passed on to all students who grace my lessons with their presence.

However, my bosses (yes, note the plural marker) are not too happy about this, as the students can use my Dutchness as a reason for any mistakes I might make in class. Never had any complaints, so what's the big deal to begin with...?

Next week, I will still be teaching three lessons. The week after that, I will probably be replaced by another teacher for the third module. This means I will have time to visit some places of interest during my final week, before going back home to enjoy the fantastic weather!

Besides this, I don't really have any news. This was a busy week with three lessons a day, meaning I had enough to do. On tuesday, however, another teacher replaced me for the second module, as we got a visit from the Monitoring Board. I have no idea why I wasn't allowed to teach, as I think I am perfectly capable of teaching my class in the first place, and secondly, I'm ALLOWED to do so because I am an intern. If student teachers are strictly speaking not allowed to teach, they should have told me so at the beginning of my internship.

Anyway, If I have more news, I will let you know. Overall, there are no big things, as my internship is coming to an end. I'm still counting the days!

Marien

20 days left...

With Rence and Steven, Amra and Michelle coming over to Malta, things are definitely looking up around here. I'm no longer the only freak to have chosen Malta for his placement abroad.

Last week was indeed difficult. Although two-hour lessons are inhumane, I have a feeling that I have learned a lot during the three 'hellish' days. Instead of thinking of two-hour activities, I have split the lessons into two hours. Unfortunately, I was in no way allowed to give breaks, which meant students were using their chair flaps as bunks after an hour and a half...

I was also confronted with the organisation at EC. Of course I have been there long enough to get an image of how they go about things at the school, but I was surprised once again. One of the colleagues at the Academic Dept. was asked to teach a new class for ONE week. However, at the end of the week she was asked to teach the class for another week, which was NOT part of the agreement. Let me demonstrate the problem by quoting the general manager of the Academic Department: "I think you will have to teach the class for another week, this is how I go about things. I tell people to do it for one week, until the next week comes, then I just tell them to take the class for another week..." Besides this, the other teachers have no idea that interns don't get paid at all. The position of interns within the company is quite blurry alltogether, anyway. Next week, I will be teaching three lessons, lasting from 09:00 till 15:00. After this, I still need to prepare for the next three lessons. The ladies at the Academic Department expect me to work at the office until 18:00 after my lessons. If preparing my lessons takes about two hours, this means I will be working from 08:30 until 20:00. I doubt that this was the intention of the internship... There needs to be a clearer contract for interns at EC, which may be something I will discuss with the director of studies, after my internship.

Anyway, I have twenty days left on this island. I am already looking forward to sharing my experiences in teaching and assisting (at the Academic Dept.) with my coordinator in Nijmegen (Jeroen Gronheid).

Marien

Hormones

Hello everyone,

I may have been quite enthusiastic about my work at EC the past few weeks, but I'm having a bad week now. Working in an environment where there are just female colleagues is really getting to me this week. You REALLY need men around you to function normally, and I don't mean this in a misogynist way. Let me rephrase: you need an equal number of men and women at an office to make sure you don't go mad... All the women are probably synced up, time-of-the-month-wise, they say this happens when women are together most of the time. This means there are weeks in which it is absolute CHAOS at work, with the hormones flying about :-)

Anyway, I have been on call again this week, meaning I had to replace some teachers. One of the classes I taught consisted of Japanese and Korean people, which I usually like. Asian people are generally very enthusiastic about lessons and work hard. Problem is their accent... it can be quite difficult to understand what they mean when they talk about 'Crima Contour', which needs to be interpreted as 'Climate Control'. Even our favourite Ocean's Ereven actor George Crooney was discussed in this class!

Next week I'll be working longer days because of a national holiday. On Friday, the Maltese celebrate their independance, meaning we'll all have a day off. However, we need to make up for this by teaching TWO-HOUR LESSONS every day! I think it's very difficult to prepare for 120-minute lessons, because students usually start falling asleep after 90 minutes. Remember three hours of Language Skills, everyone?

Right, of course I will keep you posted on how I got on during this hellish week :-) But to be serious for once, I'm sure I'll manage. There are some great activities that usually need to be split over two days, but now we'll manage to do them in one day, as lessons will last two hours. I'll be fine!

Talk to you all soon!

Marien

Invigilating

Hello!

As I may have mentioned before, I usually invigilate on Mondays. The new students take a test which determines in which classes they will be placed. During these tests, I always invigilate to make sure they don't cheat by working together or using a digital dictionary (the Russians usually have those).

However, for last Monday, I was put on the correction team, meaning I could come in twenty minutes later than usual to correct the new students' tests. However, when I got to school, I noticed the ladies of the Academic Dept. were a bit stressed out, which was because I already had to be invigilating by that time. Strange, as I was placed on the correction team, rather than the invigilating team. This kind of miscommunication can be very irritating, especially when your colleagues don't even think about the fact that they might have been the ones who caused the problem in the first place.

Still, I am very happy about my internship at EC this week, as I have been assigned to more tasks than last week. I had a chat about my job with one of my colleagues last week, in which I explained that I wanted to do more because I believe that there is more to me than just computer skills. This week, I am assisting my 'bosses' in creating classes, writing documents, and other tasks.

Of course, I'll explain later what this week has been like.

Talk to you later!

Marien

Dying down

Hey there,

Great! Next Monday, we are starting half an hour later than usual, because we only have 77 new arrivals. Now that is quite different from the 400 we had in the second or third week of my internship!

This week was quite OK, I have been focussing on the report I had to write for my CILO-stipend. In the afternoons, I have been teaching at the Westin Hotel, just like in the previous weeks. After this week, I am quite happy to say that I won't be teaching there anymore. As things are 'dying down' at EC, as my coordinator put it, we don't need the classrooms at the Westin anymore. This means I will no longer have to walk down to the Westin under the burning sun every day...

Besides this, I have been talking to the coordinator of studies about Rence's possibilities at EC. Rence has the possibility to come and work at EC, in order to finish this years internship. See http://rence.web-log.nl for more info.

Marien

VERY long term

Hi there,

In the previous message, I mentioned a long term student, who will be staying until the first week of September. However, the situation has changed :) This week, a Russian student joined the class I teach during the third module. He has already been in Malta for five months, and he will be here for another three. This means that I will be teaching this same student untill the end of my internship. Recycling is hereby rendered impossible... Anyway, as I always say, because of this, I will have to be original every day, thus: great teaching experience.

At the moment, I have a (bad) cold, which is even more annoying because of the weather. It's quite hot outside, and seeing people visit the beach makes me feel worse than I already did. Still, I am feeling better than two or three days ago, so I'm hoping to get better soon.

This week I also received my first bit of positive feedback from the students. I took over a class for a teacher who was stuck in traffic. Three days later, I met one of the students in one of the hallways, who wanted me to come back to her class. Of course it may sound silly, but these are the things that keep you going.

Besides this, I don't have too much news, I have to focus on writing a report this week... I will be jotting down what I have been doing here in Malta, in addition to making a list of all the things I have spent money on. This report is a requirement for a scholarship I received from CILO.

You will hear more from me next week,

take care,

Marien

Long term

Bonġu,

Another week passes! I am very happy to say that this week is a lot less chaotic than the previous one. From now on, I SEEM to be on call, but they didn't really give me a contract to be sure about this. This morning, a teacher decided not to show up for his class, so I was told to prepare a lesson. I asked them, 'how much time do I have?' Paula, one of my colleagues, said I had about -4 minutes to prepare, as the other teacher already had to be in class. This is why I decided just to use a lesson that I prepared before. However, when I got there, I just had the time to introduce myself before the other teacher walked in. Said he was stuck in traffic... Like that's a reason not to answer your mobile...

Most of the teachers rely on 'recycling', meaning that they use the same material every three weeks. They have enough lesson plans to last three weeks, after which they can use the same plans again, as most of the students leave after two or three weeks.

I have no such privilege, as I have a LT (long term) student in my class, who will be studying here until 7 September... NOOOO! On the plus side, this means I have to think of something else for every lesson, which calls for some serious creativity. The problem about this is that the long term student will already have learned all the grammar items, and the new students haven't learnt any of those yet. In summation: I am constantly trying to find a balance between repeating material and thinking of new items.

Next Saturday, there will be a concert in Valletta, which I will probably be visiting. Besides this, teaching takes up a lot of time, because of the preparations (see above). The two things I miss most are PS2 games (Resident Evil 4, Ioanna - still stuck at the water room?) and Dutch supermarkets (had no idea I would be missing those).

Time to get back to work, speak to you all soon!

Marien

The Office Malta

Hello!

My first two lessons (in Mgarr) have been cancelled, because they needed me around the office (again). In the morning I am doing office work, which includes escorting students to their classrooms, inputting data, grading tests, and more.

I am still teaching the third module at the hotel (the adult class). Again, I am trying to focus on grammar and speaking.

If you want to reach me in Malta, you can call me at the following number (if it's very urgent of course, as it's a Maltese number): 0035679974493.

Besides this, there is not too much news, I will get back online soon.

Marien

I don't like the term 'normal'

This message is best started off by explaining the title :)

Every day, I teach two junior classes, and one adult class. The adults want to focus mainly on speaking, so it is my job to provide a controversial topic every day (which can be quite difficult). Yesterday, I used a book, 'Taboos and Issues', to help me find a controversial topic. Eventually, I found one about gay people's right to adopt. Because there are two Russians and two Ukrainians in the class, I thought it would be good to choose this topic. Oh my god... I definitely shouldn't have... The words 'normal' and 'not natural' have been uttered at least thirty times. In the end, the discussion was about the question if gay people are normal people, rather than adoption. As a teacher, I am not supposed to give my own opinion in these discussions, but in this one I just could not help myself. The people from Eastern Europe are fully unable to listen to other people's opinions.

Although this might sound bad, the lessons are going well. I am starting to get used to getting up early, and preparing lessons has become a part of my everyday life. In this respect, this internship is great practice for the future (but definitely different from the Dutch school placements!)

In the junior lessons, I tend to focus on small talk, vocabulary and some grammar. Using the course books is an important issue in these lessons, so this takes quite some preparation. The adult classes are not too difficult, as the focus is on speaking, with a side order of grammar. However, the grammar that is dealt with in the adult class is (way) more advanced than the grammar we cover in the junior lessons.

Besides this, I have not done too much this week. The weekend is once again reserved for doing nothing :)

Take care,

Marien