Discover Traditional Russian Food: Pelmeni (Meat Dumplings)

Hello! I am Maria Meeks. From Russia but teaching French and Spanish in American high schools.  I graduated from a Russian University with Bachelor’ and Master's Degrees in English. Also I have a Master's in Education Degree from an American college (Freed-Hardeman University, Henderson, TN).  I am certified to teach English, ESL, French and Spanish in the state of Mississippi.

   My career started in Bashkir State University (Ufa, Russia) where I taught English for two years. There I met my future husband who was an American exchange student. We moved to USA where I taught preschool for three years and later high school (French and Spanish) for 13 years. I also taught Russian for one semester at Freed-Hardeman University.

   I decided to offer Russian online because I saw a lot of interest among my students in learning this language and because it is not offered in public schools in Mississippi. 
    Also I want to teach about Russian food and how to cook it. I brought some Russian food to my students, they liked it so much that they asked for recipes and some actually cooked it!

   I see my classes being hands- on experience, whether conversational Russian or, especially, cooking class. We will start conversing in Russian in my very first lesson! This is my approach to teaching any foreign language: the emphasis goes to learning how to speak and use the language in real life. As for cooking class, we can cook together during our lesson and see results right away! 

    My teaching philosophy stems from the fact that every student is a capable learner. I believe that every pupil in my classroom is able to be successful in any subject. It is my responsibility as a teacher to facilitate my student's success.
  
  I expect to create a welcoming, homey, comfortable atmosphere in my classes and I know that I will enjoy sharing my knowledge with my future students.

Below you will see a complete description of my Russian classes and equivalent of Modern Language Level that they make in High School.

Russian Level 1, Introduction to Russian Language and Culture is an 8-hour course that covers
the alphabet, pronunciation and orthography; personal and possessive pronouns; gender and number of nouns.
Conversational topics include Greetings, Family, Sports, expressing likes and dislikes.

Russian Level 2, Conversational Russian is a 16-hour course that continues with grammar nominative, prepositional and accusative cases; adjectives and gender; present tense verbs.
 Communicative areas of proficiency include 1) calendar, telling date, date, season, year, describing
weather during different seasons; 2) describing people (physical characteristics and personality); 3)
talking about hobbies, activities.

 Russian Level 3 Advanced is a 16-hour course that covers present, past, future tenses, reflexive verbs, perfective/imperfective verbs, imperative mood.
Communicative topics include daily routine, discussing Russian food, talking about three meals of the
day, telling time in Russian.

Russian Level 4 Advanced is a 16-hour course, it covers1) nominative, genitive, accusative noun cases; 2) conversational topics include talking about yourself and extended family, sports and more activities.

Russian Level 5 Advanced is a 16-hour course that covers instrumental and prepositional noun cases, as well as conversational topics about clothes and colors, discussing school subjects, professions, occupations.

Russian Level 6 Advanced is a 16-hour course with the topics to cover: going around the city, asking
for/telling directions, getting around in a store, ordering food in a restaurant.

While taking these classes students are expected to complete at least 2 hours of homework per week.
Upon completion of Levels 1 through 6 students finish 90 hours of instruction. With the grammar and
topics covered in all the courses, it could be an equivalent to Russian Level 1 and 2 of High School.