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ESL & The Peace Corps

- By Mike Dunphy -

Part 2: Training

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Within a month, most of us considered it pointless. With about a month to go, they told us training would finish with a two-week model school for local teenagers whose parents had been lured by newspaper advertisements offering professional lessons at a modest price.

It was about this time that I realized if I was going to learn anything about teaching, I'd have to do it myself. Luckily I discovered Keep Talking by Peggy Ur. It taught enough structure, planning and methodology that the two weeks passed relatively easily. For me, it’s The Bible.

It was during the model school that we finally got our teaching assignments for the following two years. They took us into a little room with a big map of the country. One by one, they called our names and announced where we were going. My only hope was to be near the sea.

I was the last to be called.

“MIKE DUNPHY?”

“Yes?”

“YOU ARE GOING TO…

drum roll

“KILINGI-NÕMME!!!

“Did she say Klingon?”

A few days later, the director of the town's high school and an English speaking teacher came to meet me and take me for a weekend there. The director was short and looked like a combination of a troll and Walter Matthau. I spent the next two days in a village of 2,000 people but still one of the larger towns in the area. It was considered wealthy but still bore the visible scars of fifty years of Soviet communism.

But it was there in the village of Kilingi-Nõmme that I spent the next two years of my life, teaching English at the local high school.

It was certainly the most significant two years of my life and the best education I'd ever had and I will discuss it further in the next article. But now, for the record, if anyone asks you for five facts about Estonia, this is all you need to know:

1) Estonians are not Russians.
2) Estonian is not a Slavic language; it's related to Finnish and Hungarian.
3) It’s cold, mother f-ing cold.
4) The women are smoking!
5) It’s perfectly normal and not gay to be whipped with birch and juniper branches by fat sweaty naked guys in a sauna.

By Mike Dunphy

 

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Mike Dunphy was born and bred in Northern Vermont. He joined the Peace Corps and began his teaching career in Estonia. Mike taught for two years at Kilingi-Nomme high school in Estonia, later moving to Prague to deal with businessmen. He has also lived in Italy, and Slovenia where he stayed until this past July. Mike currently resides in Boston, where he is the Director of Studies in a language school. He plans on moving to Istanbul in August.

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