Once upon a time....

A few weeks ago I asked my dear friend and colleague Theodore Lalos to write a guest post for my blog and he asked me if I had a particular subject in mind. I know that free writing is really difficult, so I said, why don't you write about your first time teaching?
When his post came out I thought ... this could be a great blog challenge!
So I am too going to write about my#firsttimeteaching today!

Well, I was still in my last year at the Aristoteles University, studying German lit. and language. In fact I only had 2 or 3 exams to get my degree, but I had to wait for a year since the one course was from the winter semester and the other two from the spring semester. So imagine that this was almost a gap year for me.
I had already started tutoring my cousins from my first year at the university but this does not really count for me.

That summer I went around the city giving out my CV to almost every language school there was, east, west, north and south, went through endless job interviews - people were saying to me, you are inexperienced, you don't have your diploma yet, but I kept going.
In the end I found a "job" for 3 hours a week, German beginners, kids.
My employer did not have a clue on teaching German, so I had to go to various book exhibitions and book stores and get the books, which was good because I  got the ones I liked!
So I put on my good clothes and make up, got my books and went into the classroom.
I did not know anything about pedagogy, methodology, psychology.
Just got in and started writing letters on the board "teaching" them the alphabet.
The kids were really curious to see what tis new language was about, so thank God for me they were not bored!
After practicing the letters and pronunciation we started talking about Germany showed them pictures and maps and then taught them some fixed phrases like "what's your name" and  "how are you"?
When I finished my lesson I was really happy that I pulled this through.... but now I know that I was not prepared well. I did not have a lesson plan, did  not ask advice from anyone, did not lay any games to make it more interesting for the kids.
This was the beginning ... during these 20 years I keep making mistakes, learning and sharing....

You can find the #firsttimeteaching posts over here:
The tale of a not that good novice teacher by Theodore Lalos
My First Lesson by Vicky Loras
How it all started by Anastasia Pistopoulou
First time teaching & first blog challenge by Rachel Daw 
Value the unexpected by Sophia Khan 
In Reverse by Christina Chorianopoulou 
Joanna Tsiolakis #firsttimeteaching experience
Waiting for your contributions. Send me a message if you would like to be on this list!