Accents, Accents Everywhere!

I have to say that this school I am student teaching at is a fascinating place. It is an English-speaking international school and the diversity of students is amazing. For those who haven’t heard this already, I am staying at the school’s boarding quarters. We have roughly 20 students at the school, at the high school level, who board at our school. In order to earn my keep, I am going around to the students’ rooms each night to help them out with homework and to make sure they are staying on top of things at school. Already I can tell that this is going to be fun. We have boarders from all over -- Russia, Iran, China, and Portugal, to name a few. Plus, the boarding school is next door to the building that houses my second-grade classroom. If I never wanted to step outside and get fresh air, the two buildings are connected by tunnel. Needless to say, I’ve got it good.

The school covers early childhood to high school and is based out of three main buildings, a few portables, and a brand-new, huge gym area. Apparently the main buildings were used by Nazis as secret weapon research facilities during World War II. Rumor has it that video technology was first invented here in 1945 and was incorporated into some sort of high tech bomb. I don’t remember all of the details, just the fact that Nazis used to do some not-so great stuff here. So, it’s great that this place has been changed and turned into something good.

Currently, I’m still at the observation stage in my student teaching, so I haven’t been able to do a whole lot yet. But here’s the thing: kids with accents are flippin’ adorable. And they all say my name really cool. (They call me Renata instead of Miss Olson because they call their teacher by her first name as well.) Plus, all the adults have really awesome accents too. We’ve got Australian accents, New Zealand, German, French, British, my mentor teacher is from Scotland, there are lots of people with American accents (boring), etc., etc., etc. Generally, it’s just sort of cool. Not sort of cool -- like, really awesome.