Skola Days

Let's go to school...

I teach 5th - 10th graders (5th - 10th form, as they say here, and as my students' US penpals pointed out in multiple letters... of course, one also pointed out that Georgians celebrate Hannukkah, and I'm not quite sure where he got that one), which eats up about 16 hours of my week. No, it isn't much, but after almost a whole year of working at school here, I'm more convinced than ever that: a) American teachers are underpaid, and b) I must have been the bane of at least three of my teachers' existences during high school. So to answer your unspoken question, I spend the rest of that time lesson planning, working on other projects (next blog entry: Writing Olympics!), and reading (41 books so far, more than I read for fun during high school and college combined).


We have our own English classroom, which is more than many schools can say (and probably due to the fact that there have been two previous volunteers at this school), with lovely green walls, and many little posters and maps gathered over the years-- or made by me. I personally think this rendition of the four seasons will go down in the annals of history with those of Vivaldi. There's also a lovely little food pyramid, as well as a family tree full of lies-- it was for a fifth form class, who probably couldn't handle the vocabulary of my real family tree. More steps than a tax manual. P.S. I love you guys!


The variety between the classes is hard to keep up with. Pictured here are some of the girls from my tenth form class, who probably speak English better than I do. I'm under the impression that, having been taught by the two previous volunteers, they're over the whole "volunteer" thing, and are quite underwhelmed by my presence. In addition-- I'll admit-- I feel a lack of authority when I'm telling them to stop goofing off, knowing that I was in their exact position 7 years ago. 7 years! It'd be easier for me to get annoyed by the fifth graders, but they're too adorable. I've included a video of them asking questions about a text to each other (not bad for 9 months of English study). It's as my counterpart told me, "I always have to yell at him... but he is so cute!"



Oh, and speaking of my counterpart... this is Tsira. She's been teaching for over 30 years, and she's been the counterpart for all three volunteers at my site. She's also my Georgian teacher, and she lives about ten minutes away, just past the bazaar (you know the place). In addition to teaching me the nuances of Georgian language and translating the Georgian newscasters for me, she also indoctrinates me with a love of the bygone Soviet era, a time when she could fly to Moscow on the cheap, and when her family had two cars and central heating. So now she has zero cars, but she does have two daughters who are both doctors, and one grandchild with another one on the way. She was very surprised when I told her my sister and I weren't going to move back in with my mother when I get back to the US. Another fun fact: she learned enough English in 5 months to pass the university entrance exam back in the day.

Side note, though-- the book she used then is the book we still use to teach the 5th and 6th graders. I'll reserve my opinion on those, only to say that this summer, some of us are getting together to write new elementary-level textbooks, which we hope to pilot this coming school year. And then my vendetta against the 6th-form book will be complete-- uh... I mean... at least we have books.

Much as I tend to whine when I'm on the phone with people, that's just because we generally don't get the urge to call America and tell them how great things are going when they are. So, to counteract that, we're going to cram all of my grievances into one sentence and then spend the rest of the entry on pluses.


I can't stand the amount of cheating that goes on in my class, since cheating is overlooked in most classes and it makes it really hard for me to enforce anti-cheating rules since the children don't understand why it's wrong to help each other; furthermore, it doesn't make much of a difference if I lower their grade as a punishment, since only the university entrance exam scores decide university enrollment.


Plus #1: The 7th form class. They were my least favorite at first, since-- a la TV-- they spent my first day of class beating each other with notebooks and throwing paper all over the classroom. However, they've mellowed out a little, and I've come to appreciate the fact that their... er... enthusiasm translates into excellent participation. They're still a little out of control, but I prefer that immensely to the classes I have where the students stare at me and wait for my counterpart to translate what I've said. Take a look at the picture. See the coats? This is the frigid winter (albeit not as frigid as most parts of the country), and they're still reading dialogues. Nice work, Nino.


Plus #2: The 5th form class. They're a bunch of little geniuses who are now ahead of the 6th form class, I'm pretty sure. As one of the other volunteers here said, the younger students love any activity with little pieces of paper, hence this picture where Papuna asks questions in English about the little picture taped to his forehead. They absorb words like little lexi-sponges, and they try hard to make me understand them when I miss what they say in Georgian, which is no small feat for someone with a 200-word vocabulary.


Plus #3: Extracurriculars. Although I only had one club this year, a Fitness Club with an average attendance of 3, the students have been very participatory in things like applying for summer clubs that Peace Corps puts on. For example, five of the students from our school were accepted to attend the GLOW club (Girls Leading Our World) this summer, which is quite a few for us-- nobody's ever gone before-- and I was so proud! The girl pictured, turned in the most elaborate application I've seen in my life, where she listed that Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze was her hero because of "her refined manner of speaking, with which she can convince anyone." This is translated from Georgian, but still. Way to go.


Plus #4: Lesson-planning freedom. Since my counterpart doesn't lesson plan (don't tell Peace Corps), I get a lot of freedom in the kind of activities I bring into the class. For most of the year, this was somewhat stifled by an all-consuming need on the part of the teaching staff to complete every activity on every page of the book-- minus things that required "conversation"-- but now that we're starting to finish the books, I get more leeway. This chalkboard represents an atypical lesson even for me, but it was in our quarterly TEFL newsletter Mas! Mas! Mas! so I thought I'd give it a shot. I'd like to point out that "crap" was not originally on the list, but it's such an integral part of my vocabulary that I added it, along with its subsidiary, "piece of crap."


Plus #5: Seeing students outside class. As I was wondering out loud to someone who may or may not have been listening yesterday, it's hard for me as a non-native teacher to picture the students who goof off in my English class doing well in any other subject. However, it wakes me up and fills my heart with sheepish delight when I find out about the accomplishments of the students who don't share the same affinity for English as some of their classmates do. For example, the kid in the picture is Vakho. Vakho sometimes knows the answers in class, sometimes not. He sometimes has his homework, usually not. But he turned in an application for BLOC camp (Boys' Leadership Organizing Committee) and wrote that he's a good singer. This piqued my curiosity, and at the 11th form's last day of class (also a future entry, already written but awaiting video upload) Vakho strode out with a microphone and belted out a Georgian tune. My faith in the world thus restored, I now hold out hope for that other kid who takes out notebook paper during tests and writes fake answers on it just so he can hide it on his friends and get them in trouble.

So that's what's going on at my school. As mentioned in the title, this is my primary project-- to instruct the students in English, and to make the new methods sustainable by imparting them to the teachers I work with. Stay tuned for the next entry, where we enter the realm of secondary projects, and namely my favorite one, Writing Olympics, because I can use my title as director to take credit for the work of at least thirty volunteers and ten members of the Embassy staff. Yay!