Skolashi: Part 2

Yesterday marked the start of the second week of school for this new semester, and as such it's probably a good time to finish my thoughts from a post a long time ago, in a blog archive far far away...

As mentioned previously, I'm not an education major, or a trained teacher. These are all just observations as someone who made it out of the American public school system relatively unscathed, so you might want to take all of this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, geronimo!

Every single issue I've encountered thus far in my school can be summed into one nice and tidy word - culture.

What I mean by this is that it's not only a language barrier, lack of comprehensive books, or a strict adherence to a pretty meaningless timetable that render most English classes in my school as unproductive, because all of these play a huge part in the issue. Yet the cherry on top is the biggest problem I've run into, and unfortunately it's the one that I'm really incapable of changing. It's entrenched itself into the very existence of all my kids, their parents, and indeed the very infrastructure of this little country.

I'm about to blow all of your minds right now. Are you ready for this? Ok, here it goes...

Georgia's culture is super different from English culture.

Whoa. I'm going to let that one sink in for a minute.

You back now? Ok. Allons-y!

So, our dear MacMillan books are published in Britain, meaning that my kids are all speaking British English. They're learning words like "maths" and "lorries" and are being yelled at if they don't use "has got" in sentences. There are questionable uses of "so" as a conjunctive, and I absolutely hate hate hate that they say "rubbers" instead of "erasers." The dialogues don't really teach useful conversational vocabulary, and the CD's with accompanying audio speak so fast and are so heavily accented that there are times that it takes me, a native speaker, a minute to figure out what the fuck it is that they're saying.

But I can deal with these things. They're workable. What isn't workable is the apparent battle of east vs. west that is taking place in the more abstract sense. These books are written by British English speakers, probably white, and are mass produced only in English so that they can attempt to be universal in the teaching English world, which, spoilers, isn't really westernized...

You might be saying to yourself, "Jobags, this is all pretty obvious. You're not telling us anything we don't already know." I get that. You're a smart and educated person, and I'm not trying to belittle you.  I'm just trying to make sure you're with me when I tell you that before these books, my kids have never seen a multiple choice question, and that they've never seen a fill in the blank style activity with vocabulary words, and that word banks are something that haven't been in their scholastic lives ever until now. Things that you and I take for granted because we are part of a society in which we learn how to correctly use a dictionary to find the letter we want are exactly the things that make these books less than ideal for here, because none of those things are really taught or encouraged.

In America people that don't score well on multiple choice tests are considered "stupid."1 This is because from a very young age we learn how to navigate multiple choice questions. Every single class in elementary school has some kind of multiple choice element, and kids get practice with it constantly. We're taught the most effective ways of scoring points on larger exams, and that the results of these exams will not only dictate what kind of university we can hope to get into someday, but how much external funding for our future education we might be able to receive. On the whole, we're brought up to practically do multiple choice in our sleep. The same goes for a plethora of other activities to test our knowledge about a subject. Every textbook for every class in public schools will ensure that kids are able to properly apply their new found knowledge in a bunch of different ways. American schools are grade centric; every thing we do gets a score on it, and we have progress reports, parent teacher conferences to discuss how we're doing in class, and report cards on a regular basis. We lose points for missing class, for being disruptive to our peers, for not knowing material. There are a million little factors that constitute the letter grade we receive, and we're highly aware of all of them.

But that's not the case here. Attendance in school isn't really heavily enforced - I've got one girl in second grade who maybe came to class a third of the time before break, and I have yet to see her this semester. I asked my coteacher if she was ok, and Natia gave me a look like I was insane and said, "Yes, she is fine. Lizi is just a very lazy girl and does not like school, so she does not come." I wish I had that option growing up, because I definitely would have just stayed home and read and watched documentaries on the Discovery Channel. My teachers have gradebooks, but they don't write down numbers for each kid every day, instead only sometimes giving 9s or 10s for the students that participated a lot in any given class period. Forget homework scores, because I'm pretty sure if my teacher likes the student and they messed up a bit they will still get a higher number in their notebook than a less cute kid who might've gotten a few more questions correct. So homework scores are arbitrary and ultimately meaningless because the scores for these exercises don't get transferred to the official gradebook anyway, which beckons the question, "What's the point?"

Parent-teacher interaction is limited to teachers writing down disappointed feelings in students notebooks for them to show their family. Occasionally a parent will drop their kid off at class in the morning and they'll stay and chat with us for a minute, but it usually is to tell me I am a beautiful and good girl instead of any kind of interest in how their child is doing in class. I haven't seen a physical report card, or anything resembling an actual grade, and the only type of test I've seen my kids take, outside of the ones Lamara gives my older kids, was an optional standardized test which you a) have to pay for, and b) have to go to Tbilisi to take, which drastically cuts the number of children who are even eligible to take it down by an astronomical amount.

And speaking of tests, my kids are terrible test takers. Lamara will use examples pulled straight out of their workbooks, which means that the tests are, verbatim, exercises they've done, in formats that they've seen and familiarized themselves with for a few years now. With only a handful of exceptions who actually complete the tests, most of my kids hand in their paper having only finished a question or two. In a 45 minute period. I was really perplexed by this, so I started paying attention a bit more during their next test and found that this seeming lack of effort wasn't that at all - when one of my kids gets stuck, they just stare and stare at the question, hoping to think of the answer. If they can't, then they just never move on, resulting in only one or two questions having any kind of a response. It was a bizarre feeling, having to explain to my classes that if they don't know an answer right away to go onto the next one and come back later, since that seemed like just such common sense to my standardized test centric American brain.

But it's not common sense for here.

There are so many little things that I've done since I was young that just are not a part of educational life for my lovely, tiny Georgian kids. Simple things, like copying down full words or sentences, and paying attention to copying them down correctly, is probably one of the hardest things I can ask them to do, other than spell words on their own. It's really, really weird, and I've never seen anything like it.

Also hard for them are independent creative thoughts. And I'm not even asking them to write the next great American novel. All I want are simple sentences using the vocabulary or grammar that we JUST went over, and they look at me like I might as well be asking them to write the next great American novel. My kids are amazing and wonderful at memorizing things and spitting responses back to you so long as you follow the same script they memorized. The answer to the question, "How are you?" is always, "Fine thanks, and you?" Even if they're not fine. One of my first graders lost their father over Christmas break, and that was still the answer he gave me. And not to be culturally insensitive about this, cause I realize that it's a private matter and all, but YOU'RE NOT FINE!! Say, "Not good," or, "Bad." Hell, I will even take a, "So-so!" Anything, as long as it's not the bullshit, "Fine thanks, and you," that I am just so fed up with hearing. All of my kids do it. That's how they always respond to that question, and it drives me nuts. No variation. No deviation. Always, "Fine thanks, and you."

Once I realized that my kids just memorize specific sentences and phrases, I decided to check out a Georgian textbook for one of their other classes. I just happened to look at the one for their history class, and a lot of things clicked. Like how at the end of chapters there are no review questions. There's nothing that asks for any sort of recall on the material you just read, no questions that make you come up with your own thoughts that have to be substantiated by the prior material. I borrowed my host sisters biology book, and it was the same sort of deal - absolutely no questions at the end of chapters. The same is true in every book I've looked at, with the notable exception of math texts. Aside from not getting to speak a lot of English each week (we're still at about 20 minutes a week of class time where they get to actually speak), they also are only encountering these types of prompts in one of their books, so they're not getting any kind of decent practice and familiarity with these question formats, on top of the fact that the books are only in English with no kind of Georgian direction or anything. Can you blame them for being so confused? Because I sure can't. Especially when the way in which they learn every other bit of information given to them by school (i.e. memorizing) just doesn't cut it anymore for this ONE class in which they have zero idea what the hell is going on ever cause it's in a different language and it assumes a different basal understanding than what the kids themselves have!

And it's not even like the memorizing standard is unique only to my school. Numerous other volunteers have noticed it, and I've even seen it inside my own family, whose kids go to another school in town. Watching my host sister and brother do their [non-English] homework is very strange because they just read over something a bunch of times, and then start saying the text aloud, and then when they can recite it all to their mother from memory they're done.

...Uh...buh...? What?

That doesn't do anything! Memorization, straight up, is not the correct way to test your understanding of a subject! My kids can sit there and say the alphabet all day long and say it correctly, but independent recall of stand alone letters? Nope. They're lost. And it's great that they're memorizing whole phrases, but when we need them to make up a new sentence they're just hopelessly lost because they don't understand how verbs and adjectives and nouns all work, and what you change or anything like that, because the books just aren't built for it. So I'm sitting there in class, playing remedial grammar, in Georgian (you know, that language I DON'T speak!), so that my kids can see what all is happening in the English sentences. And even then, once I get them sort of on the same page as me, my host teachers get frustrated with them that they can't commit to memory the nine new words we gave them. I've tried to get them to use flash cards, but teaching my teachers how to do drills with them has proved pretty fruitless. I keep trying every so often, but Lamara insists that having Georgian on the cards is detrimental and that they should be able to just remember what the words mean immediately. The woman has been teaching for 47 years, and I'm her third English coteacher. I highly doubt I will be able to change anything with her.

This might seem like a highly critical entry at this moment, and it's really not meant to be. I'm just trying to paint you the picture of the kind of shit I'm dealing with at school so that when I ask this next question you might be able to help me out with finding an answer.

Given the numerous differences between Georgia and the English speaking world, why do we assume that imposing a western educational system on an eastern societal infrastructure will work?

I get that MacMillian's decision to sell their books only in English is a very smart move from a business perspective. And you know, these books would actually be fairly decent if the teachers were trained to use them. But they're not. My coteachers don't understand all of the activities even. They don't ever deviate from what's in the book. They're very focused on maintaining a certain amount of material to go through for each grade, and if kids are left behind then it's just too bad. And since kids aren't really motivated to do well in class unless their parents are really urging them, the ones that fall behind tend to stay behind.

Realistically, last semester made me understand two things.

1) The money for the program I am a part of, the program that brought me to this awesome place that I love, and is paying for me to be a part of not only these kids lives but also my host family's, would be so much better spent right now on Georgian teacher development. I understand the desire to have English speakers in schools for pronunciation reasons, but bring them back in a few years. Right now, focus on having the actual local teachers able to deal with these books in the correct manner. Give them ways of dealing with behavioral issues, question formats, and external activities that all can be applied to an eastern world instead of just trying to hammer the proverbial square into the circle over and over again. Also, if you are going to use a curriculum which is highly dependent on audio disks, make sure that you can supply all of your schools with electricity so that they can actually utilize these resources. In other words, as my friend so succinctly put it, "If you are going to demand western expectations, provide western infrastructure."

2) The story of the schools, and how things are run here, is in no way unique to Georgia. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of parallels to inner city underfunded public schools in America. Education (ready for a blanket statement to end all blanket statements?), in most of the world, is really a privilege of those who can afford it. The average Georgian is unable to afford it, so many families don't really put that much emphasis on it, especially when teachers just write off kids as being "lazy" or "slow" if they don't understand something right away. It's a really vicious cycle, and it's going to take more than anything I can ever hope to do to change it.

But at the end of the day, it's not really up to me to fix everything in the Georgian educational system. All I can do is try to work with my coteachers, who sometimes very handily regress in their English speaking abilities, and stay as positive as I possibly can with the kids. I just got all of them little notebooks, and I told them I want between one and three sentences that they come up with every single day. The sentences can be about anything they want - the weather, what they want, where they went, how they feel, a cat that gets superpowers and goes to fight crime. I don't really care what it is, so long as it's in English, and that they are slowly able to realize how much they actually know versus how much they think they know. The news of these journals has been met with both excitement and confusion, because I'm pretty sure no teacher in the history of their lives has ever asked them to just write silly little phrases five days a week, but there you go. I'm a weird American, who encourages weird American things, so if it will help them learn this stupid ass language which you and I are fluent in, then that's all that I care about.



1. And no, I don't agree with it. Personally, I'm rubbish with multiple choice tests because I get super stressed out about them and tend to just fucking forget EVERYTHING I EVER KNEW ABOUT ANYTHING except for obscure Star Trek history, or something else that's totally useless for my completing the exam with any kind of hope for a decent score. But on a whole, our "smartness" is usually boiled down to a stupid number that just means we chose a bunch of circles correctly.

Health care shenanigans

Let me just start this with six words: I am fine, nothing is wrong.

Ok. So, with that out of the way, Monday I went to a Georgian hospital! I ended up missing all of my language classes that morning in order to take the trip, but thanks to some very helpful fellow TLGer's, that isn't a problem.

It all started a few weeks back with what I thought was a heat rash. Marquette had been particularly steamy and gross, and heat rash was a perfectly acceptable answer for the itchy redness that started popping up all over my arms and upper thighs. But then I had to get on a plane, so there was a lot of doping myself up with Benadryl just to make the 9 hours sitting bearable. I found it strange that after almost a week, this rash was following me overseas. Georgia added a new fun twist to my itchy life - the tops of my feet and around my ankles randomly develop itchy spots, but they tend to disappear about as randomly as they appear. This doesn't really placate me, however, because I still find it annoying as shit.

So we had our orientation meeting about the health care and insurance plan we get while here. I find it endlessly amusing that I'm in a technically developing country and I have better health care than I do in America, but that's a whole other issue. Actually, it's not, because fucking shame on you American pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Ok, now I'm really done, cause I don't feel like going into a diatribe right this moment. Anyway, I spoke with the TLG medical staff after the meeting, asking them if they had any advice about what I should do. They got the mother hen horrified face, and told me that they would arrange for me to see a doctor immediately.

Tuesday rolls around, and sure enough, I'm told I have an appointment. Now, here's why I love Georgia. Instead of leaving me at the hotel while a TLG driver went out to the headquarters (about 40 minutes outside of the city center) to pick up Kate, the TLG med staff member who would be coming with me, and then going about 10 minutes out of the way to come back and pick me up before going to the hospital, the Georgians just said fuck it, and brought me out to the suburbs with them. I am way not complaining, because it was a pretty awesome excursion around Tbilisi, it just cracked me up. The circuitous nature of my morning continued at the hospital.

I hate to do a comparison this early in, but it was just such a stark contrast that I sort of have to. Ignoring all the other things that I'm sure people would nitpick this establishment about, the one thing I think would rattle your average, run of the mill American the most is how Georgians enter their doctors rooms. There isn't a nice waiting room with the sort of smug and judgmental receptionist who tells you when you can go in, at least not on this particular floor - there are a few small rooms around a large open space with chairs for you to wait in. But in order to know if you have to sit down, you have to open the door of your doctors office, and poke your head in. If there's no one with them, you can head on in. If there is, you just pop a squat in one of said chairs until the current patient vacates. Maybe they have ways of indicating that you shouldn't enter, but there wasn't any discernible one I saw.

The whole process was pretty entertaining, especially since Kate had to translate pretty much everything. She was awesome - super patient, really helpful. The doctor just looked at my arms, and basically told me to go see a dermatologist, so Kate and I hopped in the ridiculously small elevator (no seriously, it was about the dimensions of a twin bed, and about 7 feet tall only) back down to the lobby, where we took the note the doctor gave us, and they scanned my passport, insurance card, and pointed us down some stairs to the dermatologist. She was pretty friendly, and prescribed an antihistamine pill, a sedative antihistamine pill, an antihistamine cream, and some other liquid that is supposed to help moisturize the area. So we take her written prescription back upstairs to the first doctor, who writes out the order on a different, fancier piece of paper, and that's all. We're done.

After that, it's just a matter of taking that fancy piece of prescription paper to a pharmacy to fill it. By the way, those four things I mentioned? Yeah, it was a total of 11.50 GEL, so about $6 USD. With our insurance, all prescriptions are covered 50%, so I effectively only paid 5 GEL, about $3 USD.

Granted, I did not have a serious ailment, nor did I require urgent medical attention, but the fact that I was in and out of a doctors office, with a prescription, for less than $5 USD, in under two hours, is pretty fucking amazing. 

So as of this writing, along with the two antihistamines a day, 80 minutes a day total of the bottled liquid on the rash, and putting that box of gel on them, it's way less itchy, and going down. I'm also on what looks like a gluten free diet, since they also think the rash is an allergic response to something I'm eating. I swear to god, if it's actually a food allergy, and I can't drink my delicious IPA's ever again, I will choke a bitch. But I will wait until it's fully clear and then slowly start eating foods I actually like again (I miss chocolate, meat and coffee the most, and we're only on day three of this!). Upside is I guess I'll lose a lot of weight? Neat?

Tbilisi

I love it here.

This whole city has such a good feeling to it. It's full of little alleyways with bars and restaurants, and everyone is drinking, or eating, or both, usually with groups of people.

There've been a few times when not knowing Georgian (or Russian) have been annoying, but so far those are really the only language barriers. Everyone else either speaks English, or you can mime out stuff enough for them to get the jist of what you're saying. Except for cabbies. You're sort of fucked if they don't speak English, nor you Georgian/Russian. Also, they're insane.

Let me preface this by first saying that no matter how many moments I imagined fiery, awful car crashes, I have yet to see a single accident here. This caveat is mainly for my mom, who I am sure will just puke if she thinks of me being in a cab here after reading this.

Cabbies. Are. Nuts. Well, this entire city actually seems legitimately mental once you put them behind a wheel. Everyone kind of just goes willy nilly where they want, and people apply their conversational personal space boundaries (i.e. none) to other cars. This actually works out pretty well, because it really forces the driver to pay the fuck attention. Or so I tell myself. In reality, I think they're mostly just lucky. But almost every vehicle I've been in, be it a taxi or a marshrutka or the normal metro busses in Tbilisi, has Orthodox icons on the dashboard, so maybe that's also part of it. I find it a little disconcerting that on more than one occasion I've seen drivers do a quick cross before a light changes. And they always know when the light will change because there's a little countdown clock on the side so you know exactly how long you have to wait. That's besides the point, though - we're talking about how bonkers cab drivers are.

You know that scene in Fifth Element, where Bruce Willis is driving his floating taxi trying to run away from the cops right after Leelu falls through the roof of his car? That's Georgia, only add ridiculous eurotrash techno music to it, since that is what is on every single radio. The lines on the road are more suggestions that people don't tend to really agree with. Most of the time, cars will just drive right down the center of two lanes, and sort of move over if another car wants to pass them; although if the car is passing them on the left then that car will just go into oncoming traffic a bit if the other doesn't move over fast enough (hint, you can never move over fast enough). It's really understandable why TLG doesn't want us driving here - I'm pretty sure the insurance costs alone would run the program into the red in about a week.

 All of this being said, I have to admit that cab rides are some of the most fun I have ever had. Even if they are mildly terrifying. But hey, if you're not a little scared, what's the point, eh?

Ak!

Contrary to what you might think, I am not yelling "ACK!" in disgust or because something went wrong. It's just the Georgian word for "here." BECAUSE HOLY SHIT I AM FINALLY FINALLY IN GEORGIA!!!!


It took a while -  like a seven hour drive to Chicago, and an excruciatingly long night there (not by anyone's fault, just because of my own excitement!), and then a ridiculously long plane ride over the Atlantic, coupled with a super lengthy layover in Warsaw, and then the longest. Flight. In. History. To T'bilisi - but I'm here!!!!!

Before I get to Georgia, I just want to say that the highlight of the trip in Chicago was easily my 89 year old aunt trying to convince my sister to grow and sell marijuana (since it's legal, and lucrative, in Michigan to do so). Chicago to Warsaw was nice because the kid next to me and I spent five out of the nine hours just yapping at each other about shit - Star Wars, video games, ex relationships, etc - that by the time we actually were getting close to Warsaw, most of the trip was over with, and we had also squeaked in some sleep. The 8 hour layover in Poland was probably my favorite leg of the trip, though. A couple of us decided to say eff it to the airport, and after some hilarious shenanigans with the lockers to put our bags in, and the train tickets to get into the city, we found ourselves in the middle of Warsaw.  I am so bummed that we only got to run around for about an hour and a half - I could've easily spent days in that city alone. Warsaw, I'm coming back for you!

The plane to T'bilisi wasn't departing until almost 11 pm, and all of us (there were almost 20 TLG volunteers in Poland for this layover) were exhausted from however many hours of travel previous, so pretty much all of us slept on the last leg of the journey. I do remember waking up partway through the flight to the Georgian woman next to me putting a blanket on me and sliding a pillow under my head. When I woke up before we landed, she kept asking me how I slept, while simultaneously freaking out about how the plane was never going to land because something was wrong and that her ears hurt and she couldn't hear anything. 

And then Georgia happened. Wonderful, amazing, exhilarating Georgia. We didn't see much at 6 am driving from the airport to the hotel, but I did notice a lot of Soviet style apartments that are slowly being renovated to match the Georgian architectural norm. I mean to say, they're turning grey boxes with small windows into more livable, interesting spaces. Poland looked like it was in the process of doing the same thing. I guess when your country has been under a predetermined set of rules for a long time, the physical detriment is great. Most of the buildings in T'bilisi that we saw today were under some sort of construction. I'm not sure if it was to renovate them, or remodel them, or just that 200 year old buildings require slightly more upkeep than most, but given the fact that I'm from the midwest, where our two seasons are summer and construction, the work was noticed. 

All that said. T'bilisi is incredible. There are vendors and restaurants and shops and cars on the sidewalk and cars going in reverse at 40 mph in oncoming traffic and random Irish bars where everyone inside only sings English songs. The love I have for this city, after being in it for about 12 hours, is ridiculous. And it's strange to me to talk to the other volunteers - almost no one did any research on Georgia before they came. They kind of just let it happen, and will roll with whatever happens. And that's great and all, but it just makes me feel way too neurotic to travel. Almost like I don't belong in this demographic of 20somethingyearolds who are currently country jumping. I've wanted to come here for almost two years, and I've read blogs, and articles, and watched videos and found pictures, of just about any possible thing that goes on here. And I'm still way too excited to be here. It feels kind of like I'm broken, and that I'm expecting things because the internet told me to. And while I don't personally believe that's the case, because I have loved every second since we touched down, I'm concerned that others here think that since I can tell you what all the different regions of Georgia are known for (because I can, cause I'm a stalker like that) that it means that the experience is somehow lessened. I sort of see where they're coming from, as true spontaneity is always amazing, but given that this is something I have wanted for so long, and that I am so to-the-core happy about, there was just no way I wasn't going to look up every possible thing I could before actually coming here. 

At the end of the day I don't really care what they think, it's just strange to see the complete difference in them and me. Which is good. Everyone's been great so far, and with the other half of the volunteers arriving today, I can't wait to meet the rest! Plus, when I'm in a country that has a hilarious sense of humor, it's easy to not really care about much.