Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen them in three months. Maybe it’s because I know I’ll be leaving them in two. Either way, I’ve had an inspiring first week of school reuniting with my students.
I think this feeling can mostly be attributed to the fact that this is my 4th semester teaching. I have finally reached that level of confidence that allows me to anticipate the problems and difficulties that threw me way off track during my first winter here in Novoazovsk.
Here are just a few of the problems I’ve faced over the past 2 years, and ways I’ve fixed them/they’ve improved:
Where are my students? The Ukrainian school timetable is an incredibly daunting document. I’ll admit that I never took the time to look too closely at it, as I usually felt defeated if I stood within 3 feet of it. When I needed to talk to a particular student, or find a teacher, I just waited till the break when students roamed the halls and someone could point me in the right direction. So I’m pretty darn proud of myself this year. It took me 2 days, but using the timetable posted on the central hallway wall, I was able to track down 14 different students in 4 different classes, none of whom were in their homeroom. Go, me.
Lesson Planning. Ugh. That was a stressful time, way back when, when we didn’t have textbooks. I can remember trying to plan lessons about American cities on the fly, thinking to myself, “If I just made up a random number for the population of D.C., would anyone notice?” I know that internet access shouldn’t be a priority for Peace Corps volunteers, but it was 150% crucial for me to do my job well during my first 6 months at site. The constant dilemma for me was finding substance for my lessons. It was ok to pass the 45 minutes with fillers, activities, repetitions and translations, but most of that can be described as nothing less than mind numbing, both for teaching and learning. This was acceptable because the alternative, creative lessons, were and still are very difficult to plan without materials or access to them. For teachers who don’t have adequate textbooks, and don’t have access to or have little knowledge of the internet, sub-par is the only way to teach. I have watched our English department transform into a source of bragging rights for the whole school. Our director now uses my counterpart as an example for all the other teachers, telling them that they too should be incorporating computers into their classrooms, using video and audio to enhance their lessons. And to be honest, I feel like my job here is done. My necessity existed mostly during those dark times before the new textbooks, when I was the only one capable of finding online resources for English lessons. Now, the textbooks do all that for me. My counterpart and her husband actually bought a laptop last spring for her to use during lessons. That’s how committed she is to this way of teaching. I think this is amazing, inspiring and also comforting. I can leave, and I know that what I’ve accomplished will be continued.
Massive project to complete? Start now. When I say that my efforts will be continued, I am also referring to the ability of our teachers and students to identify a problem and solve it on their own, without a PCV. Last year when we needed those textbooks, I felt a lot of pressure trying to fundraise $1500 for the grant from my family and friends back home, but raising the 25% community contribution of $500 was painful. It started with my maybe overzealous assumption that we’d be able to raise the money within the community without any resistance. Because this happens all the time in America. Magazine sales. Girl Scout cookies. Wrapping paper. You name it, and some school somewhere has found a way to bribe their students with lack-luster prizes to sell it. My first suggestion was a bake sale, and almost immediately this idea was shut down my by counterpart. Apparently it had been tried before. Some administration somewhere would not allow it, due to kitchen sanitation issues. (Ya, that’s right, we weren’t allowed to sell cookies because the local government hadn’t inspected the kitchen where they came from. Ukraine.) My counterpart insisted that we’d have to rely on asking the students’ parents to pay, and I felt a little defeated, as if that truly was the only option for fundraising. I don’t know who did it, how it happened, or really even when, but after a month of insisting a bake sale was impossible, suddenly we were allowed to have one. We raised an unprecedented 500 UAH in about 15 minutes. My next idea was the Halloween party, which was a huge success, but not in the least bit what I had had in mind. I had envisioned something more along the lines of a carnival, and it ended up being an incredibly formal, speech-giving event, like so many Ukrainian functions. We raised about 250 UAH charging an entrance fee. Then, one of the senior students basically demanded 1 UAH from each student in the school, and the remainder was paid by parents. We got our money, but getting that money from the students was not easy, and it took months.
I was somewhat horrified when I found out on the first day of school this year that we were short 40 textbooks. One of the classes that used to be split has merged, and now instead of 30 10th grade students using the English textbooks, there are 50. We have 30 10th grade books and 30 11th grade books. Thus, we’re gonna have to get 40 more books. At 116 UAH a piece (we’re not buying the workbooks), we need about $600. Boo.
I immediately decided that this was a problem for the 10th grade to solve, partly because I didn’t have any good ideas, and we need the books quicker than a grant could bring in the money. I put the class in groups and basically told them that they needed to come up with at least 2 ways to raise over 2000 UAH. I wasn’t expecting much, given that fundraising isn’t a common event here and the lack of ideas last year, but the students really impressed me. We spent a whole lesson talking about this problem, and they had a least 12 options on the board, ranging from giving a Thanksgiving concert to working as movers. A bake sale was number 1 on the list, and I told them to go for it. In fact, I think I’ll encourage them to do at least two, knowing how much money they made last year.
Their second idea was a flash mob. Actually, this was Dasaha’s idea. Dasha is the class leader, and she was probably the only person in the room excited about the idea. And maybe the only one who knew what it was. Before the rest of the students realized that this was something they’d probably be too embarrassed to do, I told them we would do it. We have practice on Monday. I’m teaching them the Macarena and the Cha-Cha Slide, and I’ve recruited my friend Ira to spice it up a bit. We will storm the bazaar some early Saturday morning in the near future, and maybe earn 20 UAH. But that’s not the point. They are doing something fun to raise money for their education. A lesson worth learning.
The third idea they came up with was to offer to work in people’s gardens. They are collecting names of old people who need help, and they will ask for a donation of whatever the garden owner can give towards their English textbook purchases. This one surprised me, and wasn’t something I would have thought of on my own. They know their community, and they know what people will pay for. The benefit of being a local.
My idea was the Out-of-Uniform day. They got pretty excited about this one, mostly because of its novelty. They’ll charge 2 UAH per student who comes out of uniform, and they’ve given it the theme “Goodbye Summer.” (I think it would be more properly termed, “NO, Summer, don’t leave us!”) Basically, they have to wear bright colors, and the brightest class wins a cake.
The final fundraising event is the Halloween party, which will be lead by me and Hayley this year. Hayley has lots of carnival ideas, and to optimize money-making potential, I’m going to insist on inviting the younger students. A carnival for the young ones followed by a disco for the older kids. Perfect.
$600 sounded like such an intimidating amount of money 6 days ago, but I actually think this 10th grade class will be able to raise all of it on their own. I am so proud of them, and so impressed with how quickly they committed to the tasks. I was careful to give them dates within the next 2 weeks, instilling a sense of urgency, but the school admin is on board, as is my counterpart, so I think we will finish all this by the end of October. You can’t get that kind of time management with a grant.
Miss. Gilles, pa-rusky, pajalusta. I am incredibly fortunate in that I have worked with English teachers willing to stay in the classroom with me. I have heard countless stories from my friends who, as soon as they walk into the classroom, they watch the Ukrainian teacher walk out. There is a very limited amount that I can accomplish in a classroom on my own, and the results only slide towards the more positive end the older the students get. There is no doubt though, I need help. There’s no point in teaching an awesome lesson if none of the students understand it. While the help of my Ukrainian counterparts has been wonderful, and has contributed much to my success, it has also served as something of a crutch. I can get through an entire lesson without speaking one word in Russian. I’ll give myself some credit and say that I do find creative ways to get my point across, and I do think it’s important for students to hear English explanations rather than translations, but still. It wasn’t helping my Russian capabilities, and as soon as we stepped out of the classroom, I no longer had a teacher to help me communicate with the kids.
This was always a stressful component of English club for me. In English club, I was on my own. I focused on the older students, the ones who truly wanted to learn English, who came to English club, probably not because it was fun, but because it was a free English lesson and they saw the potential benefit of it. This also meant I only had a group of 5 girls regularly come to English club. For the past 3 semesters, I’ve known that the little kids are where it’s at for fun clubs, but teaching them without a Ukrainian was something I wouldn’t dare attempt. Just 2 monsters in a class can turn a whole room into a chaotic disaster, and I had no interest in putting myself through that after a day of teaching.
But this year, I feel like I have finally found a way to make English club for younger students manageable. This newfound optimism has four components:
- Hayley and I are doing this together. Strength in numbers. Need I say more?
- I am not sure when this happened, but I am able to communicate with these kids a lot more fluently than I could a year ago. What I can’t explain on my own, I won’t bother teaching. And that’s ok, ‘cuse they’re in the 6th and 7th grade, and they don’t need me to explain the complexities of English grammar anyways. Their teachers can do that for them.
- I have perfected a method of discipline for kids in the 4th-7th grade range. I call it competitive bribery. I believe my mom, a teacher of the 2nd grade and under, is the one who introduced me to this particular method. The way it works is that I put the kids into teams at the beginning of the lesson. Usually, I do this by row, ‘cuse lord knows I won’t be moving those kids out of their seats that early into class. I number the teams, and I write the numbers on the board. Then, for the rest of the lesson I give points to teams in which members talk too loudly or cause disruption. From there, the kids usually discipline themselves. Anya’s not about to let Andrey ruin her chances at a silly band for the 3rd class in a row. Because yes, I give a prize to the winning team, the team with the fewest points, at the end of the lesson. I have found that silly bands and stickers go a long way towards making group work and classroom activities manageable, and I just hope that I don’t run out of them within the next 2 months.
- I played favorites. I’ve been teaching these students for almost 2 years now, and I know who I’d pick if I wanted an all-star classroom. And more importantly, I know who I wouldn’t pick. I went through the three 6th grade classes and one of the 7th grade classes and cherry-picked the smartest and best-behaved students and invited them to English club. Maybe that’s a little bit horrible, but trust me when I say that an open English club would result in havoc for one hour every Tuesday after the 7th lesson. Hayley will be working on this with me, and maybe she’ll have the guts to make it less selective after I leave, but for now, this is the only way I’ll agree to an English club for younger students without the help of a Ukrainian.
