Thursday, February 28, 2008

Why Am I Here?




Peace Corps has recently told us that the period between our sixth to ninth month of service, the time I am now entering, will be the most difficult time. It is the period when most PCVs decide to terminate their service early. I just want to say that I spent both of the last three-month periods thinking they would be the most difficult to adjust to. Apparently, we realize that we are not doing anything productive and we can’t stand being here for another 1.5 years. So I think this is a good time to assess my experience so far and speculate on my future impact.

My main goal is simple: to improve the English skill levels of my students. It sounds easy enough to attain—prepare lessons for the day’s scheduled theme and teach it. Well, when the theme is “Global Foreign Policy after [the] Events of September 11: Prospects of Asia and [the] West,” in the passive voice of course, it is difficult. Now teaching this theme to students who don’t even know the simplest grammar is impossible.

So what to do? Simple—revolutionize how English is taught here. My strategy has three parts: teach to their skill level, improve the teaching style, and create opportunities outside the classroom for students to improve their English. Let me quickly say that I do not see myself as some grand reformer who is the only one qualified to do this. The problem is that the Education Ministry provides terrible English books and sets unrealistic goals for each year. As an outsider and native English speaker, I see issues from different angles; and as an unpaid volunteer, I have more freedom to try new ideas and don’t have to worry about being punished. Besides, if I get yelled at I can tune out the Russian.

Teaching to a student’s skill level is perhaps the most critical. The skill level of the students is very low and is compounded by the fact that they do not fully grasp the absolute basics—verb conjugations of regular verbs, simple verb tenses, articles, ‘to be,’ questions, and elementary vocabulary. The reason is that teachers teach the material once in 5th grade and expect them to know it forever. They rarely review. As I am currently studying Russian, I know that students need to review the same material again and again. As a result, I am trying to include these basic reviews at the expense of new material. At first, local teachers were resistant because they are required to teach new material and argued that the students already knew the material. I don’t know why they were reluctant to admit low skill levels, but it might because it could reflect poorly on their teaching, which was not fully the case. I argued that we want students to speak English and that by teaching material so fast at the expense of review, they were actually learning nothing. Although review might “waste time,” it guaranteed that the students would be able to speak English to some degree. A few weeks ago, I stood aside in awe as my counterpart stopped her lesson after students were having trouble with ‘to be’ and spent 20 minutes reviewing it. That might seem like a small deal, but I felt awesome.

This also shows a change in teaching style, which should be improved. Teachers are required to teach out of a national textbook, which is divided into one-class lessons. However, each lesson presents enough new material for a week or two. This partly explains why teachers rush their lessons and students don’t retain much. I have basically tossed aside the textbook (there are many more reasons why these books are awful and they are essentially a crime against the country) and I am encouraging teachers to design their own lessons based on the book’s themes. This will hopefully ensure that only a few new ideas are presented in class and that the students will actually understand and retain the information. Also, perhaps due to the rushed nature of the textbook, teachers employ not the best strategies. These include completely ignoring weak students, which accumulates over the years and creates huge disparities in skill levels; asking questions and then immediately giving the answers, which prevents students practicing the new material and hides their weaknesses; and just not giving students much time to speak and hence practice their skills. All of these problems can be eased by greater patience, individual attention, and positive reinforcement. This approach has already worked with several of my weakest students, who are now improving and eagerly participating in class.

The last problem is that since there is so much to learn and the students are so far behind, there is not enough time to review and teach them enough skills to be comprehensive in English. Consequently, I am focusing primarily on creating outside opportunities for students to improve English. These include English conversational clubs, English grammar clubs, practice sheets (which do not exist), and my biggest project—a Balkhash Regional English Competition. This idea came about due to a failed state run English test in January (I can’t say in this blog why it failed without probably getting censored by Peace Corps). My site mate Drew and I decided to organize a competitive test between the twenty schools of Balkhash and the surrounding villages. As of now, we have most of the schools on board and the test should take place sometime in April with 300+ students!

The honeymoon period of service has definitely ended. But despite being frustrated and outraged everyday, things are going pretty well…or at least I haven’t broken down in the classroom and sobbed hysterically. I didn’t expect to move mountains and if there were nothing to be frustrated about, then there would be no reason for me to be here. I am not worried about the next three months.