A teacher is a person who shows children the world and lets them understand - there’s nothing impossible, you
can dream whatever you want and achieve it. The world doesn’t have limits anymore. Why should you have them?
I’m a teacher, indeed, at a local school in Brest, Belarus. My subject is German. I work at the lyceum with young people not only from the city itself, but from the whole region. They are bright pupils from villages, small towns and neigborhoods. They are young and have their lives ahead of them.
Many have never been abroad. It makes my work a bit harder than I thought first. But I’ve found a solution.
I teach a foreign language and it means I also give my students a new look at the world they know, a new look at the cultures they don’t know, a new look at themselves. I aim to show them other places, people and their lives. Everything – just inside my classroom. You wonder how? I use Local Guides program (yeah, it was one pretty long opening line ?).
Imagine. We’re having a topic “Going to the restaurant” and just following the book and the curriculum. It’s so boooorring for students ? – it’s not connected to the real life! “Why should I read how Mr. Schwarz went to a Restaurant and ordered a Schnitzel?” - There’s no reason why!
Me and my students tried to find the best Chinese restaurant in Berlin according to the reviews from the German local guides, we read about Austrian opernhauses and Swiss hotels, biergartens in Munich (it was 11th grade!) and dog-friendly coffee shops in Dusseldorf. The Local Guides program displays real people’s experiences – isn’t it a great Idea for a class? It is the opportunity to enjoy routine tasks and give them a new meaning.
I don’t want to be a teacher, who just taught someone how to write and speak properly, how to read a letter and ask about the way to the hotel. I want to be a teacher who encourages children to go upon their limits, not to fear the outside world and who shows them: we all are human beings, it doesn’t really matter whether we live in a small Belarusian village or in New York City.
We all have a strange haircut sometimes, get angry with the service at a cafe, write a bad or instead a great review for a museum we went to. For me being a local Guide is the opportunity to feel all of it myself and to pass this feeling to my students, ad a teacher. To pass this connection – that’s my aim, as a local guide.
Who knows, maybe some Russian teacher overseas teaches her or his students Russian by reading my reviews, or scrolling my pictures as examples ? It encourages me to work even harder and to be proud of being a teacher and a local guide.
See you in California in 2020!
I promise not to give to many lessons there ?
It’s unusual, indeed.
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