Let the molding of young minds begin!

I have survived my first three days of school, and first two days of teaching!! I have received my schedule for the semester, which includes about 11 classes per week plus a few hours of conversation time, where I will sit in the library and any students who want to come practice speaking with me can do so. I’m working with about 10 different English Teachers with students ranging in age from 11-18. Thus far I’ve only met with older kids, 14-18, so it will be interesting to see what speaking with first-year students is like! Thus far I’ve been presenting a pretty generic introductory lesson, just about me and my home state. I put together a little quiz about California, in both a true/false version and a multiple choice version, and the students have had a fun time with that, it seems. In general I’ll be talking about or teaching about whatever a given teacher asks me to prepare, sometimes related to what the students are studying at the time, and sometimes not. I’m hoping to prepare a few “master” lessons that I can use in multiple classes. These will mostly likely be on topics like the Presidential election, holidays, American sports, etc. All the teachers I have met so far have been lovely, and I'm really looking forward to working with them the rest of the year!

The best part of teaching so far has been hearing the ridiculous questions these kids come up with. Here are some samples:

What is your husbands name?
How old are your children? How many children do you have?
Do you know any celebrities?
Have you ever met any celebrities?
Do you know Arnold Schwarzenegger?
In Los Angeles do you see famous people and their houses?
If there are 100 people standing outside a celebrity’s house do they come out?
What if I camp outside the house for 3 days, will they come out then?
How do you feel about Justin Bieber?
Do you like Canada?
Do you like hipsters?
Are you a hipster?
Do you have a boyfriend?

I'm anxious to hear what the rest of the kids come up with. Here are some other notes/observations I've made about Austrian middle/high school kids so far:

1. They stay in the same class all day with the same people, and the teachers move around and come to them. 
2. The only time they switch classrooms is if they are older and have some electives, or gym class. They all stand up when the teacher walks into the classroom. I think it’s quite nice, actually, but I can’t see that ever happening in an American public school .
3. Apparently because there are no handicapped people at my school, they use the handicapped bathroom to store everyone’s scooters. A LOT of people ride scooters to school. It’s not uncommon to see middle aged or elderly people riding around on scooters. And these are not “scooter store” kinds of scooters. I’m talking razor scooters, or other similar styles. Its so great.
4.  A lot of people wear green. Maybe this is false, but I just feel like I’ve noticed a lot of kids wearing green. I don't know why.

I have some fun stuff planned for this weekend so hopefully I'll have more exciting news to share next week! Thanks for reading!!