More tourist capers...

Sometimes I wonder if I work at an English school or a branch of the Berlin Tourist Information Centre.

Take the 3rd of September for instance.

Within half an hour that afternoon, I was asked for directions by three separate tourists. The first was your standard backpacker couple: a Canadian couple, who were most impressed when I asked them where in Canada they were from, having figured that out from their accents. Credit for that to my sister's boyfriend, and various actual Canadian friends. Anyway, they wanted to get to a particular hostel, and were still more impressed when I told them the tram number, the time it would take to get there, and the stop name - all of which I only know because this particular hostel also happens to be an Australian-themed sports bar which broadcasts, among other things, the AFL Grand Final, and serves VB.

The second was an American couple, from Sacramento, California. They needed a post office, and also wanted to get to Checkpoint Charlie (about an hour's walk from our building, but about 8mins on the underground). I recommended they get the tram (which they insisted on calling a trolley-car) or walk to Friedrichstrasse station - about 15mins, then get the underground to Checkpoint Charlie - three stops, no changes required. The husband seemed quite happy with this, and began to move away, but the wife seemed to take my offer of information as an invitation to ask me more touristy questions than I had ever asked one single individual in my life. She seemed to consider me her personal Berlin travel consultant, and had me cornered outside the building for about 10mins, asking me about train connections to Potsdam from Zehlendorf where they were staying, about how much admission to the different theatres would cost, and if I would recommend watching movies in English at Potsdamer Platz.

I resisted the temptation to respond with a curt "Do I look like I work for Berlin tourist information?". My actual answers? 1 - no idea; check the BVG transport map. 2 - no idea; check the internet or ask the concierge at your hotel. 3 - no: too expensive - wait for the free inflight movie on the way home.

I then blatantly looked at my watch, glanced longingly (a rare occurrence) at the door of my office, and politely excused myself to return to work. He had long since got the point, and finally she did as well. Ah, freedom.

The third... the third was Chuck from Virginia, USA. Chuck would have been about the same age as my two grandfathers - mid 80s. Both of them are still very astute and intelligent individuals; age hasn't significantly affected their minds. If it weren't for the physical effects of aging, they and their respective wives would still be travelling around the world and having a marvellous time.

Chuck on the other hand... well, Chuck reminded me in many ways of some of the residents at the nursing home where my late great-grandmother spent the last six years of her life: barely able to comprehend a basic sentence, his reading skills all but gone, and very slow in his movements. He had been separated from his tour group, and having seen that we're an English school, figured that we could help him. Like the previous couple, he was supposed to be at Checkpoint Charlie. However, where I needed only a few moments to explain to them where to go to get the train and where to get off, Chuck could barely see where I was pointing to on the map I'd printed out from Google for him, let alone understand the process for buying a ticket for the train or which station he needed to look out for.

I was so tempted to walk him down to the train station, buy the ticket for him, and wait for the train, but unfortunately, I was actually supposed to be working. So I gave Chuck the map, wrote the station name on the map in large letters, and pointed him in the direction of the station.

I just hope he made it ok.

Lightbulb moments

Today was a brilliant day. Today, I had the rare opportunity of being reminded of exactly why I love to teach, and how much I miss teaching regularly.

It didn't start out that way. For the first five hours of my six hour shift, I was practically chained to the front desk - fielding calls, making appointments, answering questions, with brief sojourns into the kitchen to make coffee for clients.

At the start of the final hour, a colleague emerged from a meeting to relieve me - not a moment too soon. I had just got off the phone with a particularly challenging student, and in the ten minutes that she talked at me, six students had gathered at the reception counter demanding my immediate attention, a prospective client was asking for information on an English course, not to mention the incoming calls on the other line.

Five minutes of teamwork, and calm was restored. I seized the chance to escape from behind the desk, and headed into the back of the school to check the state of the main classroom. After refilling the pens and cleaning an explanation of possessive pronouns off the whiteboard, I ventured into the computer lab. Everything looked to be in order, and I was just about to leave when I heard my name being called.

I turned around, and saw the eager face of one of the newer students smiling at me over his computer."Hi, L. What's up?"

He was working on a grammar exercise practising the conditional mood, but despite having read the explanation and asking one of the other students for help, he still didn't understand. The memory of sitting in a university tutorial room in Clayton with two of my best friends trying to get our heads around the very same topic in German was still fresh enough in my mind that I could sympathise with his confusion, so I pulled a chair over, sat down next to him at his computer, and opened up the grammar book.

For the next fifteen minutes, we worked through the explanation and some of the activities. He seemed to be getting it, so when we got to the end of the page, I asked him to explain it back to me. To his amazement, he did it perfectly. When he finished, the look on his face is one that I will never forget. The golden moment of comprehension. The lightbulb moment. The "Aha!" moment. That expression was all the thanks I needed.

He looked at me, smiling, and said thank you. "No worries," I replied, and stood up, heading for the door. What happened next was the icing on the cake. The student he had previously asked for help had got up from her computer and was standing next to L; I heard her ask him in German to explain to her what I'd just explained to him, and you can imagine how proud I felt of him to hear him pass on the explanation.

That one fleeting moment made my day all that much better. The knowledge that I had been able to help a student understand something which previously had been a mystery to him, and seeing the realisation on his face when he discovered he had figured it out, was invaluable. It reminded me that regardless of the office politics, the problem students and the unrelenting chaos of the reception desk, the most rewarding thing about teaching for me is, and always will be, moments like that: having the opportunity to take the time to help a student understand that which was previously shrouded in mystery and confusion, and to use that feeling of achievement to encourage and motivate them to continue learning.

Those rare golden moments of realisation are the reason I teach. You can never see them coming, and you can go for days or even weeks without experiencing a moment like that, but when you do, for one blissful moment, it makes everything else seem trivial; somehow, it makes all the chaos, all the late nights and early mornings, and all your extra effort worthwhile.