Playing Catch-Up
This is going to be a two-part entry. Normally I'd give these topics an entry each and go into more detail, but if I don't catch myself up now I'm going to be talking about things that happened in March at the end of June and that's just too unorganized for me to handle. I've been terrible about writing these days, both here and in general, and I'm going to try to change that. Every time I stop writing I get all sad and mopey and can't figure out what's wrong, so I write about it and feel better and then I think, "Oh, DUH, writing helps to cheer me up and keep me positive. I always forget!" This thought process happens probably every 6 to 8 months and has been going on for something like 5 years. You would think I would know by now that I should just write, always. Unfortunately, sometimes I am exceedingly dim. Anyway, catching up!
Okay, let's be honest: part of the reason I haven't been writing is because life is too cool to sit in my room for a couple hours writing and posting pictures. For example, this was taken at the 2012 European Cup Qualifying game between Georgia and Croatia. Max is celebrating Georgia's win by excitedly waving the Georgian flag.
Part One: Super Bowl
(I know. That was two and a half months ago. If you think about it, the entry before last was about November and I wrote that in February. I AM catching up!)
I mentioned the Super Bowl in my last post and though that wasn't as important an event as, say, going to Istanbul last semester, it was still important. I have never missed a Super Bowl for as long as I can remember. Growing up we had big Super Bowl parties with appropriate snacks (chips and salsa, vegetable plates with Ranch dipping sauce, pizza, burgers, an entire pig leg, etc) and sodas and things that I didn't normally get to eat. For me it wasn't about the football (I didn't even know all the rules until a couple years ago), it was about the food and the family getting all together in the same room to scream at the television.
Nowadays I've become much more of a football fan. I don't watch it regularly and I don't obsessively follow any teams, but I will always watch a Super Bowl. Especially when it's a team with which I have a connection. Example: the Packers. My best friend, Alice, is a huge Packers fan because her mom is a Packers fan. I might not be from Wisconsin, but Alice's mom is my second mom and Alice is one of the people who got me into football in the first place. SO, it's a sort of family connection. Essentially, despite the fact that I was in Georgia, I had to watch this Super Bowl. Not only because I'd never missed one, but because the Packers were playing! Luckily, I have a Canadian friend who is obsessed with American football and has a house in Zugdidi. We made plans and come Superbowl Sunday, we were ready. During the day we went ice skating, played hockey, drank hot cocoa and made food. The game was at 4 AM our time, but that didn't stop all 8 of us from streaming the game on a TV set up on the mantle over a roaring fire. The internet connection was shaky and the game went in and out, but we stayed up because there's nothing like the Super Bowl to make you feel like you're connected to America.
Dear Georgia, Sometimes it's a good thing when you make me feel as if I've been thrown back in time. (This '58 Volga was our taxi after ice skating on Super Bowl Sunday)
Part Two: Teaching Updates
I have now been teaching for about 6 months. It has been more than 8 months since I hopped on a plane and flew here to Georgia and I have, without a doubt, learned more about myself, life and people than I thought possible. Before I left for Christmas break my grade 9 girls asked me what I expected when I came to Georgia and my honest answer was, "I didn't really know what to expect." This job was, for me, a way to finally get out of America. It wasn't about helping people, it wasn't about learning new things, it wasn't about teaching. All I wanted was to travel and escape from my feelings of anxiety and boredom and cabin fever. All I expected was to live in a different country. Now, though, I realize that sometimes things really do happen for a reason. Despite all of the things that frustrate and upset me here in Georgia, this is something I can't regret.
In the past 3 months of teaching one of my co-teachers was sick quite often. Though I never got a straight answer, I believe she had surgery at one point. She's missed five or six weeks since we've been back and because I had been teaching alone periodically the last semester, my director just assumed I was going to teach the classes while she was gone. According to my contract and the program, I am to work with co-teachers. I'm not actually allowed to teach by myself and, though I suspected this was the case, apparently everyone at my school was okay with it. I normally teach around 25 classes a week, depending, and while my co-teacher was gone up to 11 of those were by myself. Considering I don't have a teaching degree, only have as much teaching experience as I've had since coming to Georgia and don't speak the native language of the students it can be a bit of a challenge for me to be alone in the classroom.
One obvious and overwhelming difficulty: communicating. My students can't understand instructions half the time when my co-teacher explains them in Georgian, so me explaining things in English went over quite well, as you can imagine. The first time I taught alone was sometime in the middle of last semester. It was grade 4 and I was lucky enough to have a lesson that involved actions: clap your hands, stomp your feet, laugh, yell, jump, smile, etc. These are things that make it easy to teach. I was able to move around and keep the fourth graders happy by jumping up and down like a crazy person and repeating, "Jump!" I didn't know the word in Georgian, but they could figure it out when I would do an action, then say the name.
My "in-progress" Christmas Lesson for my grade 5 before break. If I can't do the actions or know the word in Georgian, I draw pictures. Sometimes I draw pictures even if I CAN do the action or translation. Pictionary is fun.
This method does not work when trying to explain to grade 7 what 'communicate' means or how to write in the passive voice. (Side note: I don't know grammar rules. I have learned more about English grammar since coming here than I ever did in the fourteen and a half years that I was in school. And I have a degree in English! My co-teacher, whose first language is Russian, second language Georgian and third language English knows grammar rules better than I do. Pathetic.) You can't teach grammar with hand motions, it's much too intricate and unless I wanted to do interpretive dance (which is misinterpreted 90% of the time, anyway) to explain 'communicate' my kids weren't going to get it because I don't know the word in Georgian and they don't have high enough English to understand an explanation. I ended up having to do a lot of translating and my students got used to me pulling out a dictionary when I didn't know a vocabulary word.
Teaching alone is easier with the grade 11 and 12 students because a couple of the students have very high English, so if I needed a little help I could get it. Unfortunately, the grade 11 and 12 students are also teenagers and teenagers are, in every country on the planet, obnoxious and frustrating. Kids are the same everywhere, no matter what their situation. In the end, I had to raise my voice and kick some kids out of class, but they're a little better now about behaving. Discipline is a real problem in Georgian schools, though the Minister of Education is trying to do something about it.
Lately I haven't been teaching alone because my co-teacher is healthy and able to come to school again (thank goodness). Sadly, having two teachers in a classroom does not help with the discipline. The boys still want to play sports and the girls still giggle when the boys act like idiots. I may not be much older than my grade 12 kids, but they are still complete children.
My grade 4 students and co-teacher. Hands down grade 4 is my favorite class. Unlike my grade 12 students, they're still excited to learn. If I had to pick a class to be in all day, every day it would be grade 4.
Despite the challenges of teaching alone and teaching in general, the kids are the reason I came back after break. I could have cut my contract short last October and gone home for good in December, but even then I knew I couldn't leave my kids early. What I didn't expect when coming to Georgia was how much I would love the kids and how little I would want to leave them. It was intimidating to walk into those classrooms the first time. Now I know almost every student in the school by name and when they have an event, the fourth graders try to stop me from leaving school so I can go, even if I have a wedding to get to. I first knew spring was on its way because the students kids picking dandelions and giving me bouquets. If I got bad news from home or I'm upset with a friend or if I'm just in a bad mood, my students can get me out of it in a heartbeat. I love these kids more than any other part of Georgia.
These days, I actually feel like I'm making a difference. There are so many things that make me glad I'm a teacher and decided to stick it the year: when one of my students who was extremely low level at the beginning of the year raises his hand to answer a question or read; when my co-teacher includes all the students; when a student who previously never brought homework pulls out a completed assignment; when my kids know more of the vocabulary than they were told to learn; when I have after school conversation lessons with my students and we chat in English; when I give pop vocab quizzes from the first unit's vocab and my students remember most or all of the words; when I flip through my a sixth grader's exercise book and see that she corrected her spelling on a word she had trouble with at the beginning of the year; when every question after, "When are you leaving?" is "When are you coming back?"
I've got limited resources (which drives me nuts), difficult students (who sometimes make me want to go against everything I believe in and smack them upside the head), lazy co-teachers (they're wonderful women and good teachers, but they sometimes just want me to teach so they can chat and drink coffee) and less support from my program than I should have, but who cares? I get through the classes one way or another and I teach the kids what I can. That's all I can do. And really, when your kids give you these on random days, how can you not look forward to school?
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