Its a technology!

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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.

Josh Ehrenreich, the Azeri

Just got my first haircut in Azerbaijan. There seems to be pretty much only one hairstyle, certainly at this point in my language skills. If you're curious what Azeri men look like, its basically this with less cool specs (also I'm smiling).

Glimpses of adulthood

Its gone around that Azerbaijan is part of the Posh Corps. We're not sleeping outside in mosquito nets or having to dig our own latrines, but instead get to sleep inside on beds where our feet can hang off and squat over holes. For some reason, some volunteers in struggle with this feeling they're not getting the full Peace Corps experience. I have none of these concerns and feel more than blessed to have running water and electricity. One gets a pretty legit experience simply from living in a developing country, speed learning a language, and trying to work with youth and adults who speak little to no English.

Instead of having to adapt to a completely different way to exist within the natural world, the biggest adaptation required has been back to a lack of independence. We have been, accurately, described to the families that host us as incapable of doing what they might think are the most basic tasks. Cooking our own food, washing our own clothes, etc. Now this is only partly true. It is not that we are incapable of accomplishing these items, only that we are not versed in the Azerbaijani style of doing it. Thus we trainees recess to the capability of a child in this environment remembering with nostalgia and angst our time in the US, as an adult.

The food has been a mixed blessing. Azerbaijan natively grows a massive variety of foods, yet the day-to-day cuisine is startlingly limited and swimming in oil. However, this past week offered a glimpse of future salvation. On Monday we all left for Site Visits and I got to stay with a Volunteer who lived on her own, transforming into an independent adult again. The site visit was awesome in every way, but most exceptional was the ability to cook again. The three of us (myself, the volunteer, and another trainee) were all cooks and eaters. The following is what we ate. All the ingredients were fresh and local. Prepare to drool.

Monday lunch: Eggplant and tomato pasta

Monday dinner: Deep dish pizza with homemade tomato sauce, gouda, peppers, eggplant, and onion

Tuesday breakfast: homemade granola and milk

Tuesday dinner: leftover pasta and pizza, zucchini fritters, gouda apple flatbread sandwiches

Wednesday breakfast: homemade granola and milk

Wednesday lunch: chocolate pomegranate pancakes

Wednesday dinner: fried green tomatoes, twice baked potatoes, beans, homemade salsa, homemade pita chips

Total cost: 28 manat (about 35 bucks), cost per person: about 9 manatee.

When in doubt, add a -dir

The Azerbaijani language is a language of suffixes. When you conjugate a verb, you add a suffix; when you demonstrate location, you add a suffix; when you make something plural, or possessive, or negative, you add a suffix. This can lead to some unwieldy word creation for the novice speaker and a scrabble player's wet dream. For example, the root word for behind is 'arxa' but if you were to use this word in the sentence 'the chair is behind the desk' the word becomes 'arxasindadir' which is a full 3x, or eight letters, longer than the original. Sweet.

This is a pain when writing, but especially annoying when you're speaking, and forced to create this new word on the spot. As a mnemonic device, my language group has come up with the rule 'when in doubt add -dir' which works with surprising accuracy. -Dir is the suffix you add to a word with an i, e, or upside down e to give the statement an 'is' in the third person (he is going to the store). When we've made a statement and our teacher is waiting on us as if we didn't make a statement (because we didn't..) we've found that adding a -dir to what we said gets it right about 100% of the time.