Hello all! Well, I am officially on winter holiday, which basically means I am spending a lot of time with fellow teachers. For the past few days I have had to go to our district teacher’s meetings with my counterparts. The district meetings are very interesting. Basically, we are all divided between subject areas and have seminars about how to be better teachers. The overall theme of the meetings thus far has been “teach using warm-up activities and activities in general.” It’s a very good concept, one that I highly believe in. I have been basically on display for the past few days as the resident English expert. During every presentation I am asked if there is anything I would like to add to the presentation and on more than one occasion I have been asked to speak. Even though I do not have anything prepared to present I made a good effort at throwing my two-cents into the conversations and presentations. I basically told them that activities are essential to learning a foreign language because they get the kids engaged and interested in learning. That is why American volunteers are so popular, because we incorporate fun into learning English and the kids actually remember what they learn. After the meetings I usually have one or two teachers try to get me to come and teach at their school, they will say, “Abby you should come to school_______________, our children need you too.” I think I have had 4 offers from other schools to kidnap me from my small village school (one offer to kidnap me from my actual home), unfortunately there just isn’t enough of me to go around and there aren’t enough volunteers for every school to have an American. I am hoping however, to start a district English teacher’s club for all those interested in furthering their English knowledge and learning new teaching techniques. Hopefully, that way they won’t need an American at their school to teach because they will be able to teach by themselves. That in my opinion is the definition of sustainability. It goes back to the old proverb: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” Thus, I have my first official Peace Corps project and I am pretty excited about it!
I am excited about your English teachers’ club. It sounds like they really like you – but who doesn’t?
Do you get to do anything extra fun during your winter break?
Thinking of you!
Molly
Haha they only like me because I’m American… just kidding.
Actually I wasn’t able to do anything super fantastic over the break because teachers were expected to work. So my counterpart Serdar and I worked on decorating his classroom with a new map and a few grammar posters. He also took me to his house and his daughter showed me around the big national park in Ashgabat, that was fun. Other than that I spent my break hanging out with my sister and her friend doing my best to translate the first 4 harry potter movies. They made me promise that this week we will watch number 5.