The story of my first day of teaching on the ship called Osman.
This is the story of my teaching experience on an oil ship. If you missed the first episode, you can check out by clicking here.
6am, a time most people loath seeing; no matter how many hours of sleep they have gotten.
I looked at my clock and I couldn’t believe it was already six AM. I forced myself to get out of bed and shaved. After that I took a quick shower, as I hadn’t showered at all while on the PSV. The shower on that supply vessel had been suspect looking; there was one faucet that hung near the toilet, there was no barrier, no shower curtain and just the same tiles that were all around the bathroom on the floor. The water was also cold, and the entire ship was much colder than the temperature on Osman. After showering I tried to find the stairs that would take me downstairs and finally found them.
What a door inside a ship looks like. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Next, I tried to remember which deck the classroom was on. I glanced at the row of decks on a list near the stairs and thought I remembered it being “F deck”. However, when I reached the bottom of “A deck” which was right above “F deck”, there were no more stairs, only a door going out onto the deck of the ship.
A look out at the sea, during the wee hours of the morning.
I went out onto the deck and it was well lit, but as I looked out into the sea there was a swallowing darkness. I couldn’t see the waves, but I could hear them. I backed up and moved further away from the rail. Finally, I saw the windows of the classroom. Going inside, the starboard door nearest to the windows, eventually I found the classroom, with the lights on but nobody inside. I sat down and waited.
Our snack bar was a little bit less luxurious.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later the other teacher Darren came in. He asked me if I had eaten breakfast and I replied no. I had woken up at six and sacrificed breakfast over a shower and a shave just for today. He told me I could get some fruit from the snack room, but I didn’t dare leave the classroom for now. We sat for the next fifteen minutes briefly going over the lesson plans and then chatting with some small talk, most of which I don’t remember now.
Any teacher, gets to see many of these.
At seven A.M. no students came. Darren showed me how to record that in the “lesson notes” file and then told me he would leave around eight for the helicopter deck. There were calls on the broadcast system about the helicopter and people leaving. These calls would come almost every day in the future, and I would get used to radio calls coming over the broadcast every once in awhile. Darren left soon after and I waited for the next class that would be at ten A.M.
This broadcast booth looks similar to the one on the bridge, but there were less sliders on the board.
When that time came though, nobody arrived once again. Darren had told me that I could do my own broadcast for tardy students using the broadcast system or I could call the radio room and ask them to do it. On the first day I decided to let it slide and not to do any radio broadcasts. It had been expected that no students would come to the first two lessons, but after lunch, there would be students for sure.
A mess hall from a navy ship. The mess hall on our ship was a lot more attractive looking.
Lunchtime came at eleven A.M. and since I hadn’t eaten, I was more than ready to start as soon as the doors to the cafeteria opened. I had to ask a person going down the stairs where the mess hall was, and he beckoned me to follow him. Inside there were around a dozen tables for sitting and eating; two kitchen counters, a salad bar, a soup kettle, a dessert table and a second salad bar, plus a double-sided refrigerator and two jugs. One of the jugs was always filled with ayran and the other was filled with some kind of juice that changed from time to time. On my first day it was filled with orange juice. The other drink called ayran was a popular Osman drink, so it was filled and emptied every day. Ayran is a yogurt filled drink by the way. A Canadian girl in Istanbul once described it to me as yogurt mixed with sweat, but I had grown fonder of it than her. I met a few people at a table and chatted with them as I ate and then went back to the class to wait once again.
About three minutes before the class started a student came waltzing in, he had his head shaved bald and bushy eyebrows. He set his notebook down and then left. Soon there were four students and later a fifth came in. The class went like any other I had ever taught before. Introducing myself, writing their names on the board, talking about where they were from and other basic “get to know you topics”. We did a maze using “simple present vs present continuous” and then spent the rest of the class playing an “adverbs of frequency game”, similar to “candyland” except they had to ask questions and answer using an adverb of frequency to get to the end.
After dinner three more students came and we did the exact same lesson. I added a second die to make the “Candyland game” go faster but it still drug on forever. We had a few minutes left so I used the adverbs of frequency to ask questions and burn out the remaining minutes. They all shook my hand and said that it was nice to meet me and then the first day was about to finally close. I took a photo of the daily attendance sheet and sent it to Darren via WhatsApp, did the lesson report and punched the students into the attendance file. I looked around the room and made sure everything was in place. Turning off the lights, I locked the door and headed back up the stairs.
Me after the first day.
I had spent all day in between the classes messaging Darren asking about the level one student classes and many things about the schedule and planning. The first day was finished but now Sunday might be even tougher, with a full load of classes. As I would soon grow accustomed to, the level two and three students skipped their lessons a lot but the level one students almost always came. Luckily the following day was level three followed by Saturday where I only had to do reports.
Planning. My life’s greatest skill.
In my cabin, I went over my schedule and now that I knew what my days were going to be like, I could plan when to go to the gym, write and plan lessons. My first plan was to do the gym four days a week, on those days edit one book and on the non-gym days edit both books. Finally, on Saturdays I would write a poem and edit both books. This plan would not hold, but it was a good start.