Montessori TEFL teacher

I’ve been living in Poland for one month working as a TEFL Montessori Native English language teacher in a bilingual Montessori private English school. I’ve settled into my new role and have grown more confident in teaching this new method of ESL. During the Christmas break I wrote up reports on the students, a kind of mini evaluation of the past month of what I observed, taught and areas for improvement.

My 15 minute conversational activity lessons during November – December 2018 included the following: first lesson introduction warmer, question structures, phrasal matching, UK reading exercises linked with History, persuasive language with role playing, the human body vocabulary and health reading exercises linked with Biology, punctuation linked with Polish and new vocabulary which was related to previous chapter words. Chapter vocabulary: transport, abilities, food and drink.

Check list

1. Listening (Able to respond to questions)
2. Body language (Body movement, gestures distracting or no-eye contact)
3. Stress and intonation (Too loud / too soft)
4. Comprehension (Do I need to rephrase)
5. Grammar (Good or needs improvement)
6. Pronunciation
7. Self-correction
8. New vocabulary
9. Writing / spelling
10. Book report

Christmas in Poland

In other news, I spent my first Christmas in Poland and I was fortunate enough to experience a traditional Polish Christmas with a friends family. Christmas Eve is the most significant date in the Polish calendar, spent with a family dinner. There is traditionally an empty place at the table for an unexpected guest… in this case, it was me! Poland is mostly a Catholic country, following a tradition of finding hay under the tablecloth. Also they usually don’t eat meat on this day, instead, fish is the main dish. Traditionally there are 12 dishes on the table and it is said that once everyone has sat down you can’t stand up until its all finished. I tried all 12 dishes of Polish Christmas: pierogi, makowiec, carp, sauerkraut, kompot z suszu, piernik, kutia, golabki, zupa and uszka.

During the Christmas break I was able to visit the UNESCO historic silver and lead Mine-Museum in Tarnowskie Gory, Poland. We entered the mine shaft and wandered a labyrinth of rocky corridors and excavations. Miners worked at the mine over 300 years ago, therefore, the experience was like combining darkness with sounds that triggered the imagination. In fact, the Silesian Voivodeship has an industrial heritage regional map which I plan to explore further and create new art works.