:: Sunday, November 13, 2005 ::

Schedule is pronounced 'shed-yool'

Because there may be some interest, I've decided to regale you with information about my current schedule as an English teacher here in Prague. The first thing you should know is that I don't teach in a classroom - at least 80% of language teaching here in Prague is in-company, which means teachers go to various businesses to teach their students at their work, and I am no exception. It also means that the majority of classes are either very early in the morning, before work starts, or in the evening, after normal working hours. So the hours aren't the best, but hey, since when were jobs perfect?

So let's look at a typical week for Rob, shall we? Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

My week starts on the weekend, when I spend either Saturday or Sunday planning my lessons for the coming week. In reality, this means I sit down Sunday afternoon or evening and spend the rest of the night rushing to get all my lessons planned! Time management has never been one of my strong suits...

Monday mornings, I get up at oh dark thirty, to get to the Metro by 6:30, so I can get to my first class at 7:30. This is at the tax law firm of Vorlíčková & Leitner. I teach 2 lessons and finish at 9:00, then usually head to Glossa to make photocopies and get all my materials together for the week's classes. I'm usually home by noon or so, and have the rest of the day free, which is quite nice. Monday evenings, however, seem to be popular times for other teachers not to want to teach, and so I frequently pick up substitutions during these times for a few extra crowns here and there.

Tuesdays, I get to sleep a little later, as I don't have to be at class until 9:00. I teach 3 lessons at VŠCR, or Vysoká škola cestovního ruchu, aka the University of Tourism until 11:30. Then it's back home for a couple of hours before I head out to Ringier, a newspaper publishing company, for 2 lessons from 2:30 to 4:00. Then I wander around for an hour and a half waiting for my last class of the day from 5:30 to 7:00. This is a 2-lesson conversation course at GTS, a telecom company, and I teach it Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. At least 2/3 of the time, no one shows up for these classes. On the good side, the classes can't be cancelled, so I get paid for the class whether or not anybody shows up. On the bad side, I still have to spend about two and a half hours traveling round-trip there and waiting for students before I can leave.

On Wednesdays, I have another early class from 7:30 to 9:00, 2 lessons for GTS again, but at a different location and with different people. Then the whole rest of the day is free until 5:30, when I return to my conversation class at GTS, assuming any students show up.

Thursdays I'm up at 5:30 again, as I have to be at the Hradčanská metro station at 7:30 to catch my car pool to Rakovník, a town 60 km west of Prague, about an hour's drive away. I ride there with two other Czech teachers of English, and we teach at the Procter & Gamble plant there. I have 4 lessons at P&G, from 8:55 to 12:00, but my fellow teachers teach there all day. Rather than wait all day for them, I instead wait about an hour at the bus station for a bus back to Prague, which takes another hour or so. It takes a big chunk of my day, and I only get paid for the actual lessons I teach, but fortunately my school pays me an extra 400 crowns to cover travel costs and the inconvenience of teaching outside of Prague. At 5:30, it's back to my last GTS class of the week. If no one has showed up on Tuesday or Wednesday, chances are that someone will be there this night. Similarly, if I've had students on both Tuesday and Wednesday, chances are no one will show up on Thursday. I have yet to have a week where all three days have been cancelled.

Thursday night is also pub night for students, teachers, and former trainees of Oxford TEFL, my teaching certification school. I don't get to see much of my former TEFL classmates, as we're all busy teaching, so it's nice to be able to get together at the Konvikt pub near the school once a week to catch up and also meet the new people in the program.

And finally, we come to Friday. First up, it's back to the law firm of Vorlíčková & Leitner for an hour (or 1.33 lessons) of class from 8:00 to 9:00. Next up is a 2-lesson individual conversation class with a very nice woman at Eurotel, another telecom company, from 11:30 to 1:00. Then it's a quick jaunt on the Metro to get to my Czech language course from 1:30 to 2:30. One of the perks of teaching for Glossa is that all native English speaking teachers get free Czech lessons. I've only had three lessons so far, but I hope I'll be able to start actually talking in Czech soon!

And that, friends and neighbors, is a week in the life of Rob. Constantly running all over Prague (and sometimes beyond), trying to find various offices and buildings, trying to make Czech-speaking receptionists understand who you are and why you're there, and then hoping for students to show up so that all of this wasn't for nothing. It's a hard life, but someone's gotta do it. And if the logistics and travel get a little annoying at times, I actually quite enjoy the teaching itself.

Now if I could just finally get my first paycheck...

:: posted by Rob 10:08 AM [+] ::

1 Comments:

I don't get it. That is the way one pronounces "schedule." ;)

-- O.o

By  Anonymous, at 11:36 PM  

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