Teaching

I teach twelve classes a week and tutor three students. Don't laugh, but I teach: Marketing, International Relations, Regional Studies, and General English. Of course, I'm not qualified to teach these subjects; after expressing my concerns to the department, they just told me that the focus is language proficiency, not the subject matter. In that case, having such diverse subject areas makes my life quite interesting.

Some more artwork for my wall.

In Regional Studies, for example, we are following a text book about China. If I am more interested in one aspect of the text and want to know more about it, then I simply ask the students to make short presentations about it. 

In International Relations, I am learning about the US-Russia-China triangle and am acquiring a sound vocabulary related to nuclear proliferation and foreign policy.

In Marketing, I am currently learning about International Markets. I teach my students such useful jargon as "can you put that in a nutshell," "we're on the same wavelength," "I can't make heads or tails of it," and the like.

My evening courses are the most pleasant because these students are specifically interested in learning English. Also, in these classes, we have a text book; unfortunately, there is no such luxury in most of my other classes. I understand that students don't want extra fees, so they have made an agreement with the department to pay only for photocopies (no, they are not concerned about copyright). Nevertheless, the reality is that it's very inconvenient to ask the students to pay for photocopies every class.

One of the main entrances to the university.

One day, I tried to make the copies myself: the department secretary explained that I all I needed to do was go to the teacher's library and fill out a form. But at the library, I was told that I couldn't because I didn't have paper. So I returned to the office confused. They explained that the library does not provide paper, and neither does the department, but sometimes there are some scraps of paper lying around. The secreatary gave me exactly the amount of paper (scrap) that I needed and asked that if there were any extra, to bring them back.



So I brought my papers to the library and the librarian made the photocopies. When it came to filling in the sheet, she told me that I had 65 copies left. I asked her what she meant. She explained that I had a quota of 95 and I had 65 copies left until January! For all my classes! That was a difficult moment for the Canadian. From now on, I will stick to electronic media and dictations.