Everyone Likes a Nice View

School began on Thursday. For those of us who aren't living in Azerbaijan, let me tell you what that means. It means that I arrived at 8:45am for an assembly I was told would begin at 9pm. As the crowd got larger and larger, I slowly moved closer and closer to the side of the building to stay in the ever-reducing shade. At 10:30 the assembly celebrating 'Knowledge Day' began and ended with two first graders ringing bells to open the school.

After the new school year was inaugurated the adorable first graders were ushered through the doors, followed by a mass of people clogging those doors preventing anyone else from entering. 30 minutes later I successfully found myself inside, only to think: 'I have absolutely no clue why I'm here, or what I'm doing'. Aimlessly I walked the halls; no one was in class, no one was in the teacher's room. And no one seemed to have any clue of the schedule.

In fact the schedule made its first appearence the next day. A massive, graphite-smudged, hand-written anachronism; its existence embodying the very argument for Excel. I jockeyed between burley Xanims to copy down my two counterparts schedules, in hopes of figuring out some compromise that would allow me to work with both of them. At this point Tamilla entered and encouraged me not to worry too much because the whole thing would change in a few days. We probably wouldn't see a stable schedule for at least a few weeks.

Thanks Tamilla, what a relief.

But this is the way of things in this country, and this is the way of one's service in this country. Beginnings are slow, changes (to your plan) frequent, and progress gradual. We are warned not to become discouraged and continue on this gradual slope of presumed improvement. Honestly, its not a bad perspective to bring back to the United States. And as frustrating as this incremental progress is, there are certain moments when you are able to step back and see progress being made, a little overlook on your mountain path to show how far you've come. These moments get me a little more excited than an American should get.

I just had one of these moments yesterday with our region's English Methodist, who is responsible for English Education in Xachmaz. We've been meeting throughout the summer discussing an idea for monthly trainings for English teachers on interactive methods. But at the end of this meeting I could see it happening. We had our first one scheduled-October 1st, we had the plan for the second one as well. We even had found another teacher who wanted to help with these, allowing me to broach the idea to him that this could continue after I had left Azerbaijan.

I left this meeting nearly giddy with excitement. 'It's actually happening,' I thought, 'teacher training and training the trainers is actually going to occur in my service'. This summer I'd often stop and wonder if I was bluffing myself, if I was telling myself I was focusing on teacher training simply because I was lazy and disinterested in classroom teaching. Then a meeting like this happens, a brief little plateau in my gradual climb that allows me to look back and see that I actually am headed in the right direction and have come quite a ways.

Eggs in Space

A PCV and I do a Conversation Club for advanced English students. We structure it by determining 'Life Skill Units' and creating 3-4 lesson plans for each one. Currently we're in our Problem Solving Unit and Lannea came up with this great activity.

Eggs in Space: A Problem Solving Conversation Club from josh on Vimeo.

Lets Make a Movie

The 8th form textbook has a unit on 'The Arts' and one of the sections is a great little oversimplification of how a movie is made. It only takes 7 steps! We did a really successful activity in one of my classes where we 'made' a movie and practiced our English at the same time; brainstorming what we would do at each of the steps-from the idea, to script writing, all the way to marketing and release. They enjoyed the activity so much, I decided to take a pic of our work.

Instant Conversation Club - Just Add Humans

I didn't rate having site mates as being too great a necessity for me when my Program Managers conducted my site interview. But since I do have them, I am incredibly glad for it. They are able to keep me sane in this foreign land and we provide an automatic layer of support in whatever we endeavor to do during our service.

Before even getting to site Lannea and I decided that we would work together in some of our conversation clubs. We had both heard that clubs were much easier when you had the luxury of two American's running it and you automatically halve the work you need to do.

We organize two clubs together. The one at her organization is a beginners conversation club and the one at my organization, School 8, is a conversation club for advanced students. This way we work with a variety of levels and get exposure to a greater community of kids.

A couple weeks ago we completed our first beginners convo club with a fun party. We finally got around to reviewing and editing our lesson plans and thought it might make sense to share what we've done with other PCVs/the world to help others get their conversation clubs going.

Below is a file that contains all the materials you would need for a beginner level conversation club. Its not language specific, so no matter what language your host country is you can adapt it to your needs as the club is mostly conducted in English. It contains 16 lessons, convo club rules, some materials, and a list of supplies you will need. Feel free to use and adapt to your own needs.

Download HERE

What Am I Doing?

That subject line is really a question I ask myself everyday for a variety of reasons, but in the context of this update, I mean it in the sense of 'What I actually am doing' over here. At this point I've been at site for a little over 2 months and have gotten myself involved in a few different projects (one might say too many) and have been brainstorming a few ideas for upcoming projects.

My primary responsibility in the community is my teaching. I am teaching 15 classes with 4 teachers which is, to put it bluntly, way too much. There is not enough consistency with any one teacher to really develop a strong relationship and there is not enough consistency amongst the classes due to the fact that I am trying to balance 4 different teachers' schedules. You live and learn; I will certainly be making changes to this strategy next semester.

The not so glamorous truth for an AZB TEFL volunteer is that there is a lot of standing around. I mentioned in a previous email that I have to remember that I am not dealing with Azeri teaching robots; well the teachers are working on learning that I am more than a hugely interactive visual aid. I love the times when I am actually teaching, however it is also the case that often I am like the map on the wall, waiting to be referred to and pointed at. This experience will decrease with time and students and teachers will become a bit more accustomed to my presence as a teacher in the classroom.

Lannea, a fellow PCV, and I are in the middle of our first Conversation Club, which is with 12 10-14 year olds. And is as awesome, funny, and exhausting as you might think a club with a dozen tweens who all speak one language that we don't speak is. We meet twice a week and have a program that is directed at beginners. It is in the Conversation Clubs that PCVs really get to have fun because we get to do whatever we want. In one lesson we taught town and city vocabulary by having them draw a huge map. In another lesson we focused on the emotions with charades. It also allows Lannea and myself to try out some potentially effective teaching techniques. This will last until mid-March, in which we will start another one up.

Every other Saturday I have a Teachers Conversation Club, which is aimed at teachers in Khachmaz that can speak the English language. Teachers continue to tell me they want conversational practice and this is one way I am trying to assist them. Last time we met our lesson was to each describe a good memory. Then we described it just by sight, by sound, by smell and taste, by touch, and by one word. The objective was to focus on summarization and imagination with descriptive vocabulary. I don't know if that was achieved, but it was fun.

Lastly, I'm on the committee for the 2011 Writing Olympics. In late March students from 6th-11th form and University will compete in a creative writing contest. They will have 1 hour to write essays on topics like 'Would you rather be a kangaroo or a butterfly?' or 'What would it be like if army service was mandatory for women, and not men?' Winners are chosen for each grade level. Then, winners from each country (there are 11) have an opportunity to compete in Tiblisi, Georgia for the International Writing Olympics. Its a ton of work but really cool. Look forward to more info about this soon.

i heart alt teachrz

One of the unnecessary items I granted myself permission to bring to Azerbaijan was a graduate semester's worth of teaching textbooks to dive into while serving here. I knew I was going into a program that had a 'train the trainer' element and I wanted to take opportunity of isolation to further research alternative knowledge transference methods. Little did I know that I would be getting a second semester worth of textbooks upon arriving. Some of them are pretty badass.

If you teach or facilitate any sort of training you may want to check these two resource out. Though primarily aimed at teachers of a foreign language I can see immediate use in other avenues for each, especially in helping you reach multiple learning styles (such as kinesthetic and auditory, rather than just visual).

Chalk Talks by Nomra Shapiro and Carol Genser. Chalk Talks showcases effective symbol use (very simple chalk drawings) to compliment foreign language learning. Its divided into three main parts. The first gives an excellent explanation of the premise of relying on symbols rather than translation. The second part provides over 30 sample lessons doing just this. And the third part is a dictionary of over 500 easy to copy symbols to incorporate into your lessons. I immediately loved this book and plan on purchasing my own copy once I am forced to return it. Heavily relying on chalk-drawings (and charades) I have been able to almost completely eliminate my need for Azeri translation in vocabulary.

Five-Minute Activities by Penny Ur and Andrew Wright. 5MA is a resource book for quick review activities or motivating starters to get a classroom actively engaged with material as opposed to simple recitation. They require very little setup, time commitment, and presumed knowledge and can be adopted for a variety of levels. Simply knowing a few off hand is an instant lesson plan and a big confidence booster. Again, this book is aimed at foreign language leaning, but most activities can be easily adopted for other subject usage. I find myself flipping through it before I begin lesson planning as they are great (and fun) ways to begin class, and thus begin presenting material.