Love what you do and do what you love

With every job comes things you don't like to do and things you do love to do. You hope, though, that the things you do like to do outweigh the things you don't. In my case, that is most certainly true :-)

While my last post about my job may have given the impression that I was extremely overwhelmed with the job, it was just simply an overwhelming week. Lots of new information, new faces, new everything--and all in a foreign language. While my German is proving to be quite sufficient here, it still takes more brain power than thinking in, listening to, or speaking in English.

This week, needless to say, went a lot better than last week! Regardless of the parts of my job I'm not necessarily as fond of, I find myself in quite a good mood every day! I don't know what it is about teaching and being in the classroom that just puts a smile on my face. I'm teaching parts of some lessons and students are starting to open up to me. And, while I certainly don't have all the names of all the students memorized, I am recognizing all of their faces and remembering quite a remarkable number of names.

I'm working in a few English classes, which is fun and sometimes challenging. I know what it's like to be on the other side of the desk, intimidated by the person in front, but I still get frustrated at the avoidance of eye-contact to not answer my questions (especially when I'm still learning names!) and the silence/lack of participation. It'll come though. I'm also working in a few German classes, which is challenging for my German, but in the best way! It's fun when there is two-way learning going on--the students are learning from me/the other teacher, and I am learning from the students! Everyone loves to feel like an expert in something, and sometimes the students get to be that expert when they help me with my German. And they love that. Another part of my job is to do Homework Help after school three times per week. There is one student who I've worked with a number of times--sometimes with German, sometimes with Math, but always communicated in German--and when I'm not sure what something is called, he gets this little smile on his face and tells me what it is in German. It's not a haha-you're-stupid smirk, but a wow-I'm-teaching-the-teacher smile. And, to him, it probably feels so silly and weird that I can't remember what "divide" is or that I don't know what "vertigo" is in German ("durch" and "Gleichgewichtsstörung" respectively, in case you're curious), but now he gets to be the expert for a minute, which I think is an important part in the teacher-student relationship. :-)

So, even though there are parts of my job that I don't look forward to every day, there are bigger parts that I do look forward to. And that's the most important part :-)


Sidenote: We all thought I was done with the carpet-cleaning business back in July when I finished at Stanley Steemer, right? Wrong. Yesterday, I had to clean the carpet in a classroom and was told that the rest of the school needs to be done next week. We clean the carpets every three months with an at-home carpet cleaner, and while it won't always be my job, this time it is. (The parents do it sometimes.) When I was cleaning the carpet yesterday, I couldn't help but wish there was instead a Stanley Steemer in Winterthur...haha!