English Teaching story 1

Welcome to the first episode of this blog series. I will be sharing stories related to my English teaching career and also a lesson to go with it each week. To see more blog posts follow me on Facebook or Instagram.

Somewhere in Norway.

It was the end of my last trip in Norway, and I was considering a new career that could lead me back there. I had just spent seven years studying Wildlife Biology, Psychology, Archaeology, Theatre, and Film. I was feeling like it was a waste as it seemed like I couldn’t get a job anywhere. In Norway I had applied for 84 jobs and only gotten one email back. In future months I would apply for 140 jobs in Virginia, get 8 interviews and zero job offers. A few days before leaving Norway, a Norwegian friend recommended that I consider teaching English. She reasoned that the in ten years that most of the English teachers were going to retire and Norway would need new teachers.

Picture of Concordia

When I returned to the USA, I set off looking for master’s programs related to teaching: English programs and Education programs. I found a program in Minnesota I liked called “Concordia College” and I applied for it. I went through the process, submitting documents and fees but at the last moment I was rejected. I was now left to search for more programs, but the more I looked the more I found nothing that worked out either.

I turned to online programs. They also looked great, but when I looked at the money I was making, I estimated that it would take 4-5 years to get the master’s degree in education that I needed. That is when I found out about TESOL and TEFL certificate programs. (TEFL stands for “Teaching English as a Foreign Language”) I had two options, take 4 to 5 years working on a masters and then start teaching, or get a certificate and start teaching immediately. With the second option I would be able to gain experience and travel right away, whereas with the first option I would be stuck in America for half a decade. In five years, I would have four or five years of experience. I chose to go with experience and the certificate.

Lesson 1: How to deal with failure

When I was rejected by Concordia College I was crushed and sad. Like many other failed plans, yet you can only stay in doom and gloom for so long. I have learned over the years, that the best way to deal with failure is to create a new plan and goal and start working towards it. To replace failure with thoughts of success and to replace bad experiences with past or future amazing experiences.

Osman Chapter 10: Trials before Blessings

Here we are in chapter 10! This week many bad things will happen and then a good thing will happen at the end! If you want to start at the beginning then click here.

Nothing but blue to see, and the smell of sea.

The next morning there were no students at the level two six A.M. class per usual. With the free time I took the opportunity to go to the top deck. As I gazed out at the horizon the French warship was no where to be seen. The Ottoman warship was missing as well. I went back down to the bridge to do the daily printing and to learn about the most recent gossip about the warships.

Nothing but smiles.

Uzgur was smiling as I entered the bridge, he was talkative and in a jocular mood. The warships had agreed that both of them would leave and for now no military action would be made against Osman. I finished my printing and showed him the list of students who hadn’t come yet. He promised to take the list to the captain who would talk to the students individually.

The following day the captain came back with news that some of the students were too far behind and they didn’t feel comfortable being in the class. With the new crew, I had noticed that there were a couple of students that were so far behind that the class was almost impossible for them, so I wasn’t surprised. They would end up getting laughed at and teased by their friends and one of them had told the radio man that he couldn’t understand anything, so he didn’t want to come anymore as well. I decided that I would make an extra class on Saturday since there were no classes then. I called it “Beginner catch up class” or in Ottoman: “Super cok beginner ders”. I put up posters along with the normal crew list with their class times. I came up with a creative idea, but I made one mistake. I added two confused looking people and then speech bubbles where I wrote common English mistakes that Ottoman students make. I.E.: “How old are you?” “Fine thanks and you?” “I am very money” etc. The only problem was that this enticed some people aboard the ship to add their own bubbles.

The daddies of the coop right?

One person added “I love cock” and put it right above the confused girl’s head. I decided to report it to the radioman and asked him if I should write a focus card. These were cards where anyone on the ship could report a safety hazard or complain about something. He laughed and said “No, let’s tell the captain.” The captain also laughed and said there was nothing we could do because there was no way to figure out who had done it. He said to write back “Come to the OIM’s office (the captain’s office) and you’ll find the biggest one”. Then the radioman started to talk about how one of the helicopter pilots from Cameron had a large cock too and the captain asked him how he knew.

I decided to do nothing, I thought that writing a response might get me more responses and they might write on future posters for more entertainment. Half a day later the message was still up and the talk of the ship. One of the head guys on the ship asked me to scratch it out, but I had a better idea. You know if you turn the second “C” in “cock” to an “O” it changes the word to cook? So that’s what I did. Then I added “ing” on the end. “I Love cooking” it said, which was a little bit sexist since it was above the girl’s head, but it was better than cock.

The mess hall was like a frat hall, even though most of the workers were 40 to 50 years old.

I assumed people on the ship might write on the posters at some point, as whenever I heard the foreigner’s conversations, they usually talked about three things: “Women, cocks and masturbating”. These of course were the western foreigners on the ship. I sat with them a few times and it was silent when I sat down, that was until someone brought up one of the three topics. Then they could talk for hours. I still figured if cocks and raunchy conversations were the worst thing about the ship, then everything would be ok.

In theatre the broken leg is a great thing, on an oil ship: not so much.

However, there were soon injuries in successive weeks. First a guy broke his leg on the stairs. There were constant reminders in safety meetings about holding onto the rail, and in those same meetings half the focus cards focused on people walking up and down the stairs, with a coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Perhaps they were holding the handrail with their foot and hopping down. This man was apparently carrying laundry down the stops and missed the last two or three steps and crashed down, and cracked his ankle, with a minor fracture. He claimed he was holding the handrail when he fell but nobody believed him.

These fleshy sticks weren’t meant to go in a grinder

I thought that would be the end of it, that maybe everyone would be on edge and extra careful about safety, but I was wrong. The very next safety meeting there were two more injuries. One man twisted his wrist and had to be taken to Antalya for X-rays. He returned in under forty-eight hours and was working again though. Then there was a man who got his finger stuck somewhere it didn’t belong. He also went to Antalya, but he wasn’t so lucky. Part of his finger was amputated after his glove got stuck in some part of a machine and tugged his finger in after it. It made me glad that I was an English teacher.

Cranky tears, know no age.

That was until the new crew arrived. The classes went well and were pretty typical lessons, but one class came in and they were overly pushy. Immediately complaining about reviewing old content that half of them couldn’t do anyways. Demanding that the class be ended early because they were tired and more. I was happy to let them leave about five minutes early. I wondered if the last few weeks were just subsequent hell weeks. Then there was an announcement. “Do not use the elevator, maintenance is being done on it.” Well, I didn’t think anyone would be using it anyway since it hadn’t been working for almost two months.

Pretty close to how our elevator worked.

What I imagine the Scotsman on the radio looked like.

It wasn’t but a day later where the message “The elevator is working, I repeat the elevator is working” came across the PA system. A second PA announcement followed “WOOHOOOOOO”. Perhaps it was even more “O’s” than that. Something good had finally happened, and in relation to this week I had to say “it was about time.”

Osman Chapter 7: Weekly Safety Meetings

Welcome to the next chapter of the story of my life on an oil ship as an ESL English teacher!

To begin from the start of the story click here.

The feeling of completing a lesson.

I completed the first wave of level two and three classes, as well as the first abandon ship drill but now the next day loomed. My first weekly safety meeting and all those level one classes. I also needed to get my face fitted for an oxygen mask, as I was reminded by the guy who helped me find the stairs when I was lost on the “NAV deck”.

Pastirma and fried eggs.

I woke up around six AM, as I had every day so far on the ship. I put on my clothes and headed down the four flights of stairs to the mess hall. There was a smaller sized crowd than normal. I had “Pastirma” and scrambled eggs. Pastirma is a “non-pork” version of Osman bacon that is super salty. I was told that people had to be careful of eating too much of it as it would emit a strange smell from ones pores if they ate too much of it. I grabbed a couple of fried eggs and a tomato slice as well and washed it all down with a cup of orange juice.

The calm before the storm.

Then it was off to the training room. I went through the normal rituals, unlocking the door, plugging in the printer, opening the laptop and turning on the TV. I browsed over the lesson plan and then waited for students to come in. About three minutes before seven the first student came in and then before I knew it there were three of them.

The nuts and bolts of English

This class was a unit behind the others, and there were two main students who were a bit older and one of them was a lot slower than the other one. We learned some vocabulary, did a few listening activities and then busted out the “Oil and Gas” book. There were two books we were using, Speak out and Oil and Gas. Speak out was a generic ESL book with vocabulary, listening, grammar and writing exercises. The Oil and Gas book was similar but had lots of vocabulary and exercises that tied in working in the oil and gas industry. This book was good but a bit too academic and advanced for the lower level class. I reviewed some tools with them, tools related to their job such as a spanner, wrench etc. For the final activity we read a dialogue together first and followed that by acting it out. It took them a few moments to get the gist of the role-play exercise but then it was off and rolling. “What’s in the box” “Some screws” “how many?” “14” “that’s too many”. They practiced several more phrases “That’s the wrong part number” and “Perfect, that’s the one we need”. Then it was eight fifteen and time to say goodbye. They waved enthusiastically and went to sleep, I waved back and got ready for the next class.

I cruised through the ten AM class and before I knew it, I was eating lunch. After lunch I wandered into the cinema for the first time since my tour with Steffen the safety guy. There were already three or four dozen people in the seats waiting and there were some people signing a paper on a clipboard. I walked past them and sat down, not really knowing what they were signing or doing. Then each person that came in signed the clipboard, so I asked a man sitting near me if we needed to sign in. “Yes,” was the answer.

A scene from the episode.

 It wasn’t long until the meeting started. Steffen spoke in English and another Osman gentleman translated every twenty seconds or so. They showed a PowerPoint presentation which focused on trash segregation, and also pinpointed the main safety precautions. Stair safety was the most popular topic this time. They showed a clip from a family guy episode where he falls down the stairs a lot and then decides to live upstairs to avoid going down the stairs. I never thought so much about a handrail before in my life but now with the ship weaving and bobbing sometimes; it seemed like a good idea, especially after that family guy episode.

The award for winning the weekly competition was usually a powerbank.

The main event of the meeting was when they randomly drew the winners of the week. These were drawn from the focus card reports that had been filed that week and then the ship’s captain gave free power banks out to the two lucky workers. The focus cards were written when there was a problem or a safety issue. There were usually around two hundred of them written each week. Don’t be too alarmed; some of them could be as simple as a person not shaving or someone not holding the handrail while walking up the stairs. Others could be more serious, not following safety precautions with equipment, leaving flammable material in a bad place and so on. After the meeting the students strolled into the classroom, some of them on time and others late due to the meeting and wanting to smoke afterwards.

Breathe…

The class went well and after reporting attendance and class notes I went upstairs to find the oxygen mask guy. He was Scottish and it was the same Scottish guy who gave me the H2S safety briefing on the first day. I was supposed to take a deep breath and hold it for eight seconds. He told me, “take a deep breath, then I will give a signal.” Actually, it sounded more like “Tek eh depp breth, en I well gev ya eh segnel.” I took a deep breath and gave him a thumbs up, then he said something that sounded like a mix between start and stop. It sounded more like stop, so I started breathing again. We did it three times before I figured out that he was saying start and not stop. He didn’t know that I was breathing and thought air was leaking out of the mask, so he pulled it as tight as he could, and it was already tight enough to begin with. After I realized what he was saying we progressed through the attempts much faster. He gave me a copy of the results and I parted ways with the Scotsman for the last time.

I usually feel like this picture at the end of the day.

After dinner and my final class, I closed the door, locked it, and headed upstairs for the night. The classes and hours were going by much faster now. I had completed my first week of classes, my first abandon ship drill, first safety meeting, and all of the safety briefings and other things I needed to do. I felt a sense of relief as I laid in bed that night. I had seen all the students and been through all the classes so the lesson prep would be much smoother now. Likewise, I had been through the safety meetings and drills, so they would also be much easier going forward too. Now just for one more thing to get used to, the painful feeling of waking up at six AM.

Osman Chapter 6: The Abandon Ship Drill

Welcome to this weeks blog! We are continuing the story of my life on an Ottoman oil ship as an English teacher. This week I experience my first abandon ship drill. If you missed the beginning, here is the first episode: Prologue.

Wht my class often felt like….

The second day with the level three students was another easy one. A single student came at seven AM and then two students came for the seven PM class. No students at ten AM and again no students at one PM.

Ok he looked a little bit friendlier than this.

Around midday a knock came at the door and a large student with glasses came in to talk to me. He looked like a guy who liked to talk, and that turned out to be true. He came in and talked to me for about fifteen minutes and then left. The day was pretty quiet after that; I started my gym workout, edited one book and did the level three class at seven. As I was putting everything away and preparing to lock the class up for the night, I remembered that there were certain emergency drills on a weekly basis. I tried to recall where I was supposed to go. There was one where I had to go to the cinema and sit on the right side, then there was another one where I had to go to the lifeboat. I had completely forgotten the deck, but I had a faint memory from my tour with Staffen, he had said that I should go to lifeboat 2.

When all the stairs and hallways look the same, how do you find anything?

As I walked up the stairs, I ran into one of my students named “Vahap”, he was a welder from my level two class. I asked him which deck it was and he told me “Deck B”. I felt a sigh of relief and continued up the stairs.

Everyone’s favorite time.

I woke up and it was Saturday, a more relaxed day with no classes. Then I remembered that I had a student named “Barak” who needed to take an exam, because he had had to leave the class early the previous night. So, I got up around eight thirty and went to the class. After giving him the exam, the day was pretty quiet. I filled out the reports and prepared the lessons for Sunday and Monday. This day I wrote one poem and edited both of my books then around seven PM the student with glasses returned.

Is this your gourmet cheese?

His name was “Serkanhan”. I had previously tried to learn Polish and the name for cheese was “Ser” and kan, was like “can” in English, so this is how I tried to remember his name: “Cheese can”. He talked to me for about fifteen minutes and then told me that there was a drill tonight and asked me if I knew where to go, I told him lifeboat two on B deck. He said “wow”, and added that most people didn’t usually know where to go.

Hello sir, what beautiful music you have. Would you mind turning it down though?

I was preparing to leave around nine o clock when the dreaded screeching noise came. It sounded like a giant alarm clock that you wanted to slap and never hear again, but this giant alarm clock never stopped beeping. I calmly followed a man into the cinema room, and we were the only ones there. Then an announcement came “This is an abandon ship drill, please go to your primary muster point”.  The guy next to me jumped up and yelled “oh shit, primary muster point?”.

I often felt like I was on the Titanic.

My thoughts exactly, “Oh shit, primary muster point? B deck, right?” As I headed up to B deck, lots of people were running past me, many of them with life jackets, the further I went up the stairs, the less people I saw. It was apparent that I was going the wrong way, and I couldn’t find a door to go outside. I asked a man, who was in a hurry, “Lifeboats are on B deck right?” His answer was “No, follow me.” We clambered down the stairs and then I realized we had to go to “A deck”, not “B deck”. I also needed my life jacket, “Should I go back up two flights of stairs and get it?” I asked myself.

What an amazing device, I wonder who invented it?

Then I saw a locker filled with lifejackets, so I grabbed one. After a few moments of figuring how to put it on, I turned my card around and stood in line. We stood there for what felt like forever, and there were still people missing. They sounded the alarm again and this time it kept going for five or six minutes.

Scotland. What a beautiful country, but what the fuck are they saying?

The whole time my group was silent except for two Scottish guys, who spoke in thick dialects. “Aye did’yeh se’de farse down by de were-well-e?” “Naw’r deh stret far’lo deh begg’in.” “Seh deh Mester Flackersnap slepen on deh shep en’de Pharoh Islands?” I got “Mister Flackersnap” and “Faroe Islands” and that was all I understood. These guys continued to talk throughout the drill and finally the radioman reported that only three men were still missing. Four minutes later a dozen guys came walking out and shortly after that the drill was finally over.

Me, almost every night that I was on the ship.

Like all nights, I went back up to my cabin to go to sleep. Now I knew where to go, hopefully subsequent drills would be much easier.