“I am Fit” vs. “I am Fat”

Continuing with my experience during Pre-Service Training…

Aside from learning Russian, a more important task was learning how to teach. The mission of Peace Corps states that only trained people will be sent overseas, but in the case of English teachers nearly all of us had no substantial teaching experience. And to be honest, in my ignorance I did not think there was that much training required for teaching at the secondary level. But I was wrong. Thanks to the incredible training staff at Peace Corps, in three months I learned how to design lesson plans, present and practice difficult materials, and communicate despite an enormous language gap.

But first, let me give some background on the school at which I taught. When I first saw the building, I thought I was in a rich suburb of Southern California. The building was new and freshly painted pink. There were at least four computer rooms and a language room with brand new equipment. All students wore impressively neat suits and dresses and girls wore white poofs in their hair the size of their heads. Is this really the type of school that Peace Corps sends people? But soon after we started observing classes, I saw room for improvement. In all subjects, many of the teachers just read from the book and the little drilling used was completely ineffective. Most of these teachers cared for their students, but from an American viewpoint the creative components that I used to take for granted were painfully absent. Hence even though we trainees did not have formal training, we innately incorporated interactive and creative styles in our teaching.

The most critical skill I learned in training was lesson planning. I was taught to create feasible and measurable objectives for each lesson, such as “students will be able to create a dialogue of six sentences using the new vocabulary.” Also, Peace Corps uses the P3 method of teaching: presentation, practice, and production. For presentation, the teacher presents the material, vocabulary or grammar, and uses visual aids and gestures to demonstrate meaning across the language gap. For practice, students use the new material in creative ways that emphasizes speaking and interaction. For example, I create games or activities such as ball tosses, relay races, or board games that force the students to speak the whole time and use the new material. All these games must directly serve the objectives of the class, which is executed in production. In this last phase, students make a dialogue or a text or answer questions without notes and without my help. This tests what they have learned that day and requires them to use it unassisted. Lesson planning takes a long time because the themed chapters I am supposed to teach are extremely eclectic and making visual aids and game pieces is also time consuming.

The most important part of training was of course, teaching. I must admit I was nervous about standing up in front of fifteen perhaps unruly children and trying to communicate without any Russian. I thought I was going to hate teaching for at least the first year. But after the first minute at the board, I became exhilarated! Although the production of my first lesson was a crash and burn, my second was executed very well and I have since got the hang of it. I now love teaching, though I will not make it my profession. In the five weeks that I taught in Uzunagach, I saw amazing progress! Instead of spending the whole 45 minutes not saying a word in English, students actually were excited as they tried to form sentences and even after class they were eager to speak. I was told by one teacher that she was shocked that some kid actually volunteered to demonstrate a dialogue in class because he always refused to speak.

However, there have been some difficulties, especially in team-teaching. Since a goal of Peace Corps is to make sure most of what the volunteers contribute is sustainable, we teach English with local English teachers. This exposes these teachers to different teaching styles. But sometimes these teachers aren’t interested or misinterpret what you say. My favorite example is when I taught a lesson on being fit and I asked my counterpart to translate “I am fit” and she translated it as “I am fat.” For the next ten minutes, students were confused at how activities like weight-lifting and running makes you fat.

In addition to teaching English, I also ran English clubs. The English club was an informal forum to speak in English and learn about American culture. Since their English levels were very low, club was limited to singing songs and playing games. But it got students interested in English. I guess the goal of these clubs is to find a small group of interested students who will be able to discuss ideas in English and actually prepare them for a future that will involve these skills. For the other students, it is just fun and might improve their performance in class.

But one of the most rewarding components of teaching (and well being an American) is the immense popularity. Yes, that sounds shallow. But when you have children constantly yelling your name and some random English words or phrases and crowds always around you, it is impossible to not feel happy and eager to work. Maybe it is because I have never been this popular at school, but I think it is good that these kids look up to me because that will make them more interested in learning English.

That is basically the end of my pre-training service in Uzunagach saga and my next entry will be about my life in Balkhash, which for the past three weeks have been great!