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.

Skolashi

After being in the schools for over a month now I think it’s high time for a post on my school that delves a bit more into what’s going on. This is going to be part one, as I doubt I will be able to get everything out of my system without it turning into a novel.

Please note that I have no formal training in education, and that my opinions are all coming based off of having a crappy anthropology degree, as well as being the [successful] result of  crappy American public schools.

I guess the place I should start first off is my schedule. I’ve classes Monday through Friday, with four classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, which are my heaviest work loads. Yes, you heard me. Four classes in one day is the most I work any given week. The rest of the days are either one or two classes. The grades are 1-6, and although TLG strongly encourages us to get into the upper grades (7-12), I’ve elected not to.

Sidenote: I did attend a few of these classes when school first started, but I was way more of a distraction than a help to older kids. Most of them are uninterested about school and their normal teachers to begin with, let alone some random foreigner, and the ones that actually are engaged in class will endlessly hit you with a slew of highly personal questions every.single.class, much to the frustration of your host teacher. I figured it would be better if I just stopped going to these lessons…

So the whole purpose of TLG, and indeed why I am here in Georgia to begin with, is to put native English speakers in English language classrooms around the country. It was a radical new program that began a few years ago by the [at the time of this writing] current president, Mikheil Saakishvili, and it brings in people from America, Canada, and the UK. It’s a pretty great set up, actually. They fly you from your home country to Tbilisi, pay you every month, put you up with a host family that can take care of your dietary needs and creature comforts, give you health insurance and paid vacation, and will also fly you home at the end of your contract.

It used to be that they had two start dates every month, putting the number of foreigners, each month, at 120. Lots of people that did this program were just looking for something to do for a short stint, so they didn’t really invest themselves in the schools or with their families. Some saw it as an opportunity to convert this highly Orthodox country starting when they’re young, and one person was so bold as to actually lock the door of his classroom when his teacher stepped out for a moment and then start preaching his Bible to a whole room of kids. There are horror stories like that riddled throughout the programs history, so it’s no wonder that since last year they’ve cut the number of start dates to two a year and are highly selective with who they bring over. 

Volunteers are not expected, ever, to lead a class, nor teach the students by themselves. Instead, we work with the current English teachers, bringing our Western ideals into the school and helping the kids hear what English is supposed to sound like. When I say "Western ideals," I am basically talking about any type of education method that does not rely on the strictly Soviet style of read-translate-memorize which is so rampant here. 

My two coteachers are on opposite ends of the spectrum. One has been teaching for only a few years, but she's enthusiastic, open to suggestions for activities, lesson plans all the time with me, and has a pretty positive outlook on lessons. The other has been in the teaching business for 47 years. In fact, she had my host dad as a student. While she isn't as super Soviet as other teachers that I've heard of (no corporal punishment, for example!), she never deviates from the read-translate-memorize method I mentioned before. And since she has been teaching for 47 years, and I am her third volunteer, I doubt she's really going to be changing much. Both teachers are technically fluent in English, but their pronunciation of words is highly accented, and there's still a language barrier with them many times. This isn't to say that either of them aren't helpful - they really are, and I'm not trying to bash on them at all. I actually like them a lot, even the older one, who can get slightly terrifying sometimes when she screams in Georgian at the kids. I'm just trying to paint you all a picture of what, and who, I'm working with. 

The books we're using for the early grades are part of a new movement throughout Georgia for teaching English. They're decent enough, and there are a lot of exercises in them that make sense. However, they're ONLY in English. Immersion teaching is awesome and all, but that only works when it's part of a unilateral movement in school and home every single day. Most of my kids have English lessons two or three times a week, with long stretches in between. Added onto that, many times both my coteachers end up speaking mostly in Georgian, and these kids are talking roughly, and this is a very generous estimate, 20 minutes a week in English. Do you know anyone who was able to pick up a language with that little of practice? Cause I don't. 

I can understand for some abstract words, like adjectives and what not, to have a Georgian pairing so the kids can frame the foreign word in their head. However, for vocabulary that has a picture there's zero reason to even think about saying the Georgian word. I've tried to bring this up with my teachers a few times, but they keep reassuring me the students won't understand unless they tell them what it is. I'm skeptical about this, but since I have no idea what they're saying to the kids in class anyway, I'm going along with it for now. Upside is that I'm picking up a lot of vocabulary. I just wish the kids would, too!

The other thing that really bothers me is that these books focus so heavily on reading and writing. There isn't nearly enough practice for the kids to actually speak, which is unfortunate, given that this is where they're really strong. Instead, they’re forced to do the same type of exercises over and over again, never really understanding what it is that they’re saying. One of my coteachers told me the other day that, even in Georgian, kids don’t know what verbs, nouns, or adjectives are. My students are all scraping by based on the examples given in the books instead of freely constructed thoughts. Yet examples aren’t necessarily a guaranteed way to get them to form a sentence since many can’t even copy words down correctly. It’s strange, because they’re not stupid. If I sit there and verbally spell out the words, most of my kids can write them (minus the illiterate ones, of course), but they don’t really put together what the words mean in the overall context of the sentence. I’m going to go ahead and blame this one on inconsistent classes, and having English be the only lessons where the materials are encouraging new types of learning (matching, word banks, fill in the blank, etc) in their otherwise very Soviet style schooling.

So instead of encouraging the kids to speak a lot, and thus actually let them progress quickly through this bullshit language of ours, we bog them down by forcing them to read and write. Most of them don't understand the use of capital letters since Georgian only has one form of their alphabet, so all of their written answers have random capitals thrown in. Classes are full of frustrated students who feel left behind and like they are ultimately hopeless cases. I try to be as positive as I can, and always reinforce kids even TRYING to speak, and they're just now starting to get less shy about yapping at me. Most of them now run up, throw their arms around me in a hug that only a kid can give, and then immediately launch into Georgian at a million miles an hour, giggling when I look confused and say "ar vitsi" ("I don't know"). I'm hoping that this shift means that they'll all start being more involved, and since a few of my more problematic kids have already begun actually doing their homework and volunteering answers, I think we're on the right track. 

Classes are a bit chaotic since speaking out of turn isn't really discouraged. A lot of times lessons are filled with kids talking over each other, or them helping each other out immediately if one is having trouble reading something aloud. It's really cute, actually, and you can see that already in these young ages the cultural dynamics of community and cooperation are instilled. Also, every single kid here would be diagnosed with ADD in the States. And I’m not exaggerating. Even my really awesome kids, who are [mostly] quiet, always do their homework, can recite entire stories at the drop of a hat if you tell them to, would be too “unfocused” and “problematic” in America.  The problem most of the time is the disparity in mastery of the material – a few students per class have it down no problem, some kids are sprinkled in the middle who sort of get it, yet most will fall into the category of not having a clue. The best kids get bored with lessons so they zone out, the worst ones get frustrated by lessons and will just stare into space, and the mid range kids see all their friends being distracted so they, too, become unfocused. And then the teacher screams and stomps her foot, and for a second they’re startled, but nothing really changes. Repeat ad nauseum.

There are no real consequences for bad behavior or not working in class. Grades are sort of given, and while students want high marks their drive to get them is not enough to actually put the work in to earn these. So far we have had one test in my 4^th-6^th grades, and they, for the most part, all failed it. We’re talking scores of 2/40 points failed. Again, it’s not that they’re stupid, because the tests we gave them were straight out of their book, and were all exercises they have been doing for weeks. There’s just zero retention of the material, which is a problem I’ve been trying to tackle but find it challenging when my teachers don’t share the same mindset to sit and drill kids (in fun ways!) until they can answer quickly and accurately. I made flashcards for my first graders for colors, and after two meetings, and two pretty intensive flashcard games, you can bet your ass that those kids can tell you what color your shirt is, and that the leaves on that tree in your yard are green. My one teacher noticed what I was doing with the flashcards, and saw that it actually worked, and has started approaching the alphabet reviews we do in the same way. Even though a few letters still trip them up, these little five year olds are able to identify most characters out of context, and pretty quickly. Being the daughter of a behaviorist, this tickles me.

The only thing that works better than flashcards, however, is Hangman. I never saw my fifth graders try harder than the day we told them if we got through our whole lesson and they understood it that we would play Hangman at the end of class. Everyone was actively engaged, and even my shiest kids were particularly vocal. The best part of it was that after that lesson, they remembered everything from the previous class. They were all smiling, were super happy, and we have yet to have a bad class since this breakthrough. Who knew that bribing some kids with a lousy game of Hangman would ultimately be the proverbial Holy Grail of learning English?

I guess when it comes down to it, bribery really is the way to get what you want out of life.  

This is a page out of my third graders book. I forgot to mention above that while these books fundamentally are decent, they piss me off. The vocabulary that's taught is completely bogus. I think it's outrageous that by third grade, my kids don't know the days of the week, or months of the year, or hell, even ordinal numbers! However, they can tell you all about a space rocket, and Ned the astronaut that lives on a space station. Thanks, dicks.

I'm mobile, bitches!

I've finally gotten my iPhone all hooked up to Georgian cell towers, so check my badass self out! Subsequently, this might become more like a Twitter feed, with numerous smaller posts, but I'll still do big uploads every few days. Gotta keep things interesting, after all! 

I'm currently sitting in the teachers lounge at school. This is the fourth day so far, and I've a break between classes, so I figured I'd give some first impressions on being a teacher. 

First off, English is stupid. I've known this for a while, but having to teach all the rules and stuff to kids, and watch their tiny heads explode from definite articles, prepositional words, and messed up spelling, has only solidified this opinion. Especially coming off a language like Georgian, which fundamentally is logical, simple, and whose alphabet is specially tailored to it. Also, these kids start learning English and Russian in first grade, on top of Georgian. So that's three different alphabets, three different grammatical structures, and three different pronunciations. Georgian kids are badasses, and I am officially done complaining about how hard it is to learn a language. 

Secondly, the staff here has not disappointed in terms of hospitality. They all are very welcoming and nice, and always try to talk to me either in broken English or my ridiculously bad Georgian. I think it's funny that no matter how hard you try and inevitably slaughter the language, they will laugh at you, but then help out. Being from a supportive, somewhat mean family (I say "mean" because we all make fun of each other a lot, and that's how we show affection...), this isn't that out of the ordinary. I also really like it when they make fun of my abysmal Georgian and then hand me a cup of chacha and make me eat dumplings and cake. 

My coteachers have also asked me if I like Georgia every single day. It's like their go to "we should try to talk to the retarded American" question. This question also, every day, inevitably leads to "do you like Georgian men? Do you want a Georgian husband?" I've found that men here know one English word - "boyfriend." Any time I try to use an excuse like "Oh, I have a boyfriend in America," which I totally don't but I don't feel like being endlessly courted by men here so I lie, all the men in the room erupt in ridiculously hearty laughter. They then tell me they've heard that before, and since Georgian men are the best I will soon change my mind. Given that I can't cook, and they sure as hell can't either, if I ever did end up with a Georgian man we would shortly starve, so I think I'll stick to non Georgians for now. 

Finally, the school itself is...if I said rough shape that would be giving it way too much credit. It would fit in well in Detroit, lets say that. The walls are fucked and cracking, I've yet to find a light that works, the stairs have holes in them, the railing is messed up, and some rooms have that musty "haven't had a breeze blow through in 40 years" smell. But none of that matters. The kids don't notice, and neither do the teachers. All the rooms have drawings on the walls, and posters and flowers and curtains and tablecloths on the front desk. After I initially noticed all of these negatives, I stopped seeing them. 

The kids are all very bright, very enthusiastic, and they pick up on things incredibly fast. One of my co teachers called this school a big family - she meant it literally, as we have several pairs of mothers and daughters, sisters in law, brothers in law, etc. But it also functions as an extended and unrelated family due to it's size. My biggest class is 10 kids, the smallest is 4. The kids all know, respect, and generally like their teachers, and there is a level of familiarity present that you don't really find Stateside. 

So these are just first impressions, and I'm sure they'll change and that come mid semester I'll be frustrated by something. But for now I'm gonna just chill and suss out my place in this crazy chaotic workplace.